


Scooby-Doo, Where Are Yu-Yu?

by Star Charter (Bibliograph)



Series: Lucky Child [5]
Category: Scooby Doo - All Media Types, Scooby Doo Where Are You! (TV 1969), 幽☆遊☆白書 | YuYu Hakusho: Ghost Files
Genre: Crack, Crack Crossover, Gen, Haunted Houses
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-04
Updated: 2019-04-14
Packaged: 2019-10-22 03:43:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 24
Words: 18,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17655419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bibliograph/pseuds/Star%20Charter
Summary: Yusuke and co. investigate a demon sighting at a mysterious mansion in the mountains—and so do the members of Mystery Inc. But is the real demon here a hungry youkai, or just a pup named Scooby-Doo?[A completely ridiculous crack crossover told in 500-ish-word snippets.]**Main storyline COMPLETE.





	1. Haunted House Hang-Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a haunted house beckons certain would-be sleuths...

Far to the north of Sarayashiki lay a forest, and at the heart of this forest sat the imposing heft of Onigumo Manor.

The forest was, whether by necessity or happenstance, dark and dreary and thoroughly unwelcoming. The manor was all of these things, too, but with the additional misfortune of pronounced dilapidation. It had stood for a hundred years, at least, comprising a dozen sprawling wings that had fallen to disrepair and myriad gardens that had once been lush but now were overgrown and rotted. No one was precisely sure when the manor had been built. Deeds and papers in the nearest town's city hall likely gave an exact date, but to most of that town's residents, the manor appeared as ancient and inscrutable as the forest that shaded its crumbling roof. To them, it seemed, the house would stand as long as the forest's swaying pines stretched tall, as ineffable and inevitable as the flow of time itself.

This manor was, of course, deeply and distressingly haunted as fuck.

"Well. Allegedly haunted, anyway," Koenma had told Yusuke over a videotaped mission assignment. "But you're not going there to look for ghosts. A demonic presence was recently detected in the vicinity of Onigumo Manor, and since hikers have been disappearing in that area as of late, it will come as no surprise that I'm calling you in to investigate, Yusuke."

By "Yusuke" he meant and Yusuke's friends, that is—namely Kuwabara and Kurama, who walked at Yusuke's side as they travelled the dirt road toward the house, and Hiei, who was probably off skulking in a tree somewhere. Hell if Yusuke knew. None of them had particularly wanted to come on this mission. Yusuke spent the majority of the hike to the manor grumbling about stupid toddlers with too much time on their hands, and when Kurama shushed him, Yusuke rolled his eyes. Kurama needed to chill out.

But when Kurama pointed head of them, Yusuke shut up, fast. Kurama needed to chill out, sure, but when he got that serious look on his face, Yusuke knew better than to bitch. He followed the line of Kurama's finger without another grouse, and above the trees that loomed over the road he saw the crest of a broad, dark roof. The manor rose out of the forest like a ghost ship rising from the deep, and at the sight of it, Yusuke gave a little shiver.

"Nearly there, huh?" Kuwabara muttered.

"Almost," Kurama replied, but quietly.

Yusuke jammed his hands into the pockets of his jacket. "Let's just get this over with."

Kurama and Kuwabara nodded. Yusuke kicked a rock down the path ahead as they approached the manor. The thing loomed large, broken windows like jagged teeth in a dark maw. Kuwabara grumbled something about the place being damned creepy—but before he could curse out Koenma, too, Kurama held up a staying hand. "We aren't alone," he said in his low, soft voice, and Yusuke followed his bright green gaze to the manor's heavy front doors.

There, posed before the door knockers shaped like roaring fu dogs, five figures stood on the manor's front stoop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story will be told in 500-ish-word chunks. Also for the duration of this fic, we're pretending Yusuke & co. all speak fluent English because it just makes things easier on me, OK? #CrackFicCreativeLicense
> 
> Also, note to LC readers: A chapter was due out this weekend but personal events and a migraine derailed my updating. Take five chapters of this instead as meager compensation for emotional damages (which might only be made worse by this slop, BUT OH WELL IT'S TOO LATE NOW AND HERE WE ARE).


	2. Surprised to See Fred (and Friends)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which our sleuths stumble upon the unexpected... and the unexpected's dog, too.

The five figures were all  _gaijin_. Or four of them were, at least.

The first was a tall guy with blond hair, broad shoulders and a square jaw. Handsome, if you're into the classic-good-looks type or whatever (Yusuke didn't have an opinion, but something told him Keiko would like this guy). He wore jeans and a white shirt, and around his neck he sported an orange ascot. He was speaking to the other people on the stoop, waving one hand in the air as he smiled brilliantly enough to blind. The group's leader, probably. He had that look about him.

The skinny dude with the goatee, mop of brown hair, and baggy bellbottom pants, meanwhile, certainly wasn't leadership material. He kept glancing at the grinning  _fu_  dog door knockers and gulping, throat moving so hard Yusuke could hear it from a dozen meters away. He could hear this guy's knees knocking together, too, legs trembling with fear he didn't bother to disguise. Yusuke suspected the dude might have even fear-sweated through his dark green t-shirt, but he wasn't quite close enough to see (or perhaps smell) for sure.

The girl beside him, meanwhile, wasn't at all scared. She stared up at the house with a no-nonsense smirk on her face, one hand propped on her jutting hip. Her purple and green dress clashed brilliantly with her bright red hair and pink tights (not that he had any right to criticize given his own predilection for mixing prints and colors), but somehow she managed to pull her hip-hugging outfit off. Something told Yusuke she had dressed herself with intention, breaking fashion ground with gusto. Confidence was always sexy, Yusuke suspected, even while wearing green and purple and pink mixed together.

The girl next to her was likewise confident, though in an understated way. The first girl wore fashion like a weapon, but this one didn't give a crap about it at all. She wore a red miniskirt and an orange sweater, hair cut into a blunt bowl, and she gazed at the house with open and determined curiosity—like she might glare the house into giving up its secrets. Yusuke would've pegged her for a nerd even if she hadn't been wearing coke bottle glasses with thick rims, but her glasses definitely sealed the nerdy deal as far as her looks were concerned.

And then there was the fucking  _dog_.

Yusuke at first thought it was a bear or something, it was so big. A really big, knock-kneed, pigeon-toed, trembling bear with knobbled joints and a barrel chest and paws the size of dinner plates. Only after squinting at it for thirty seconds did Yusuke realize it was more likely a badly bred Great Dane and not a grizzly who'd swum the Pacific and landed in Japan. The creature slinked about the heels of the tall guy with the goatee, hunkering down to the ground as its eyes rolled up toward the house above, and if Yusuke hadn't known any better, he'd have said the terrified expression on the dog's face was damned near human-lookin'. The dog's hangdog expression (ha, get it?) mirrored the skinny guy's almost exactly.

But what the fuck were a bunch of teenage  _gaijin_  (not to mention their deformed dog) doing all the way out here?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lord mercy I'm actually writing this garbage OH WELL TOO LATE HERE IT IS.


	3. The Diabolical Dog Demon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the unexpected's dog does something unexpected, which Yusuke and co. honestly should've expected (knowing their luck).

To find out, Yusuke figured he should probably just haul off and ask, and so he did exactly that. It's not like Yusuke's the type to think things through first, after all.

"The fuck are a bunch of  _gaijin_  teenagers doing all the way out here?" he barked, eyeing them over from a distance. He didn't bother to keep his voice down. "This isn't exactly a tourist trap."

Kurama's eyes flickered his way, glittering with warning. "Quiet, Yusuke," he said under his breath—but it was too late.

As one, the group of  _gaijin's_  faces turned in unison toward Yusuke.

The blond leader guy had good instincts, at least, protectively stepping in front of the rest of his friends with an exclamation of surprise. The pretty girl with the Technicolor outfit gasped, hand flying to her glossed lips as her eyes flew wide open. Less impressively, the tall dude (squirrely lookin' motherfucker, Yusuke thought) nearly jumped out of his skin when he saw them standing there, and the dog did the same, somehow appearing to get smaller as it tried to hide behind the beanpole's legs.

The short girl with the glasses jumped, too, but she recovered quickly enough. "Jinkies!" she said, pushing her glasses up her nose with the jab of a startled finger. "Who are you three?"

"Yeah!" said the blond guy. He drew himself up and thrust out his chest, putting on the tough-guy act. "Who are you people?"

The dog seemed to shrink in on itself, though it couldn't get small enough to hide completely behind the tall dude. "Ruh-roh, Raggy!" it said—wait,  _it_   _said?!_  But none of the  _gaijin_  looked even remotely shocked to hear a dog talk, and Yusuke (and Kuwabara, and Kurama) were the only ones who did double takes when the dog added, "Re've rot rompany!"

The group of  _gaijin_  nodded. "Let's beat it, Scoob!" said the tall one, and without another word the four teenagers and their dog hauled open the door of Onigumo Manor and dashed inside.

For a moment, no one in Yusuke's party spoke. Yusuke swallowed. Kuwabara stared openmouthed after the  _gaijin_. Kurama pinched the bridge of his nose with a sigh. Eventually Yusuke lifted a single disbelieving finger and pointed at the manor's open doors.

Yusuke said, "Did that dog just…?"

"Open its mouth and talk?" said Kuwabara.

"Yes. It did," Kurama confirmed.

Yusuke said, "So we're thinkin'…?"

"That it's the demon we're lookin' for?" said Kuwabara.

"Yes. We are," Kurama also confirmed.

"OK," said Yusuke. "Good.

"OK," Kuwabara repeated. He nodded once, then twice. "OK. Good."

"We're in agreement, then," Kurama said.

A beat passed.

Then, as one, the trio rushed toward the front door of Onigumo Manor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What? You didn't think they'd notice A TALKING GODDAMN DOG? Jesus Christ.


	4. Hassle in the Hallway

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the gaijin and their dog defy physics. And logic. And the laws of space-time.

Chasing the  _gaijin_  through the dusty and crumbling halls of Onigumo Manor wasn't all that hard, mostly because the halls were… well, dusty. Five sets of footprints (two in heeled shoes, two in tennis shoes, and one with four enormous paws) had carved clear and unmistakable tracks through the dirt and debris coating the rotting floorboards, making it a total cakewalk to follow the fleeing teenagers into the depths of the house.

The fact that the  _gaijin_  weren't very smart was helpful, too. They fled in a straightforward path through the house's entry hall, through a bare dining room, and into a long hallway lined with a half dozen doors on each side of its lengthy stretch. That's where Yusuke and his friends came upon them; the  _gaijin_  stood in a knot, looking frantically between the many doors in what was obviously really,  _really_  pathetic confusion. Just pick a door already, morons.

Yusuke would come regret that sarcastic thought, though.

The  _gaijin_  turned as Yusuke and company came into the hall. They jumped, comically in unison, and then they scattered, each bolting for an individual door that they wrenched open and dove inside.

The dog, it should be noted, opened his door with his tail, which curled and twisted like a monkey's tail around the nearest rusty doorknob, opening and shutting it with disconcerting dexterity.

"Yeah," Kuwabara muttered as the door slammed shut behind the mutt. "That  _ain't_  no dog."

But the dog's prehensile tail was the least of their worries. No sooner had the door shut behind the dog than did another door swing open—a door on  _the opposite side of the hall_ , not to mention further up the hall, and the dog came scrambling out of this door as if the two doors connected on the other side, which was  _clearly_  impossible since they were on  _opposite sides of the fucking hall_  and whatnot. And at first Yusuke thought maybe this dog-demon had dimension-warping powers or something, but soon the  _gaijin_  all came bursting out of doors that it was frankly not possible for them to burst out of, and there went that theory.

"I know I failed physics class," Yusuke said, "but this is ridiculous."

"It's like somethin' from a slapstick cartoon!" Kuwabara looked grey about the face as he staggered backward, gaping in horror at the scene unfolding in the hallway before him. "What the FUCK?!"

Kurama didn't reply. Ever the tactician intent on conducting research (and maybe getting a stomach wound in the process; dude had weird hobbies), he reached for the nearest door. He walked through it. And he popped out of a door on the opposite end of the hall with a positively bewildered look on his face.

"And we thought the House of Four Dimensions was disorienting," Kurama muttered as the girl in the orange sweater somehow followed him out of the door, exclaimed "Jinkies!" and vanished back into it. Exasperated green eyes slid to Yusuke and Kuwabara as the girl reappeared on the hall's opposite side. "A little help wouldn't go amiss, you two."

And so Yusuke and Kuwabara took deep breaths and tried a door for themselves. The sensation of being slapstick-cartoon-teleported was somehow less nauseating than Yusuke expected—but it was infinitely more annoying than he expected as he dove in and tried to catch the stupid  _gaijin_ , who were as unperturbed by the odd nature of the doors within Onigumo Manor as they had been when their deformed Great Dane had started to talk with its whack-a-doodle speech impediment.

This case, Yusuke decided, was fucking  _weird_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did you REALLY think we could have a Scooby Doo fic without a logic-defying hallway chase scene? Those are CLASSIC. Also all the chapter titles so far have been riffs on either Scooby Doo or YYH episode titles (or are just straight-up titles from certain episodes) because I'm an unoriginal and also pun-obsessed bastard.


	5. What the Hex is Going On with Yu?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the gaijin defy logic again, but in a few way, which gives Kurama a headache.

Somehow, and in spite of Onigumo Manor's best attempts to discombobulate Yusuke into submission, he managed to corner the  _gaijin_  and their stupid-ass demon dog in a dead end—entirely by accident, mind you, but Yusuke would take what he could get under these circumstances. He and Kuwabara and Kurama managed to walk through one of the doors in the long hallway at the same time, and when the door slammed shut behind them, they found the entire gang of  _gaijin_  barreling through a door on the other side of what looked like some sort of study. Rotting books sat on shelves covering the entire height of the walls, a fancy wooden writing desk sat caving in on itself in the corner, and as the other door slammed shut behind the  _gaijin_ , the blond guy with the ascot lifted a finger and struck a pose like an accusatory courtroom lawyer.

"A- _ha!_ " blondie declared. "Nowhere left to run!"

At the same time, Yusuke raised as finger of his own and bellowed, " _Now_  we've got ya!"

These chorused statements obviously posed a logical problem for everyone who heard them. The two groups blinked at each other. Kurama and orange-sweater-nerd began performing mental math, judging by the constipated looks on their faces. Kuwabara and the dude with the goatee each started counting on their fingers. But it was Yusuke and the girl in the purple dress who broke the silence eventually, each of them glaring at the other with a confused call of, "Wait,  _you_  were chasing  _us?"_

There followed yet another moment of silence as all parties tried to suss out this set of contradictory (and paradoxically identical) statements. Eventually Kurama shook his head, looking  _sick and goddamn_  tired of this entire mess.

"Forgive my ignorance," he said in a smooth voice that clearly indicated he thought everyone in the room but him was an incorrigible moron, "but we're here for the demon of Onigumo Manor, and—"

"Hey—so are we!" said the girl with the purple dress.

"Wait,  _what?_ " said Yusuke.

"That can't be right!" Kuwabara pointed at the dog. "The demon is with you!"

The  _gaijin_  just stared at him. In slow increments they followed the line of Kuwabara's hand, looking at the gangly dog hiding behind the tall guy with the goatee's legs in confusion. The dog had hunkered down so close to the floor, it looked half the size it had appeared earlier, staring forlornly around the skinny  _gaijin_ 's legs with white showing all around his frightened (and weirdly expressive) eyes. But the blond guy with the ascot just laughed, and soon all the  _gaijin_  joined in.

"That's not the  _demon!_ " said the blond guy, as if  _the literal talking dog_  was not in some way a supernatural entity, which it very clearly was. "That's Scooby-Doo!"

"He's our friend!" said purple-dress-girl. Her hip thrust out, and she put one hand upon it as she tossed her hair. "Now tell us  _exactly_  what you three are doing here, now!"

"We could ask the same of you," Kurama replied. His eyes lingered on the dog, who whimpered and shrank back. "What brought five Americans all the way out here, I wonder."

"It's just like I said," said the blond guy. "We're here to investigate the red demon of Onigumo Manor."

"Legend states he stalks the grounds of this house and eats travelers who stray too close!" said purple-dress-girl.

"Several people have gone missing up here in the last few weeks, and we thought we'd check it out," added the girl in the orange sweater. "That's what we do, because we're Mystery Inc.!"

All of the  _gaijins'_  chests puffed out with pride at that, including the dog's. Apparently the name they'd dropped meant something to them, because they looked at Yusuke, Kurama, and Kuwabara with expectation written all over their face.

But all Yusuke said was "Fucking WHO?" and their chests deflated like balloons under a butcher's knife—and the guy with the goatee muttered to the dog, "Like, I don't think they know who we are, Scoob."

And Scooby-Doo muttered back, "Rooks rike it, Raggy.  _Rut-roh!_ "

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry. I really, really am sorry about this whole thing. Really, I am. But the plotbunny took hold and here we are. More to come soon. Hope you enjoyed this first-five-chapter dump and that you won't abandon me out of secondhand embarrassment.


	6. A Night of Fright is No Delight

The blond guy introduced himself as Fred. The redhead with the purple dress was Daphne, the nerd with the orange turtleneck was Velma, and the tall beanpole with the jittery disposition was Shaggy. The dog, of course, was Scooby-Doo—and the members of Mystery Inc. considered him an official member of the team, prehensile tail and speech impediment and all.

"We solve mysteries." Fred had taken point on the introductions, proving himself the leader of the gang once again. Daphne nodded along at his side, backing him up as he said, "We specialize in debunking the supernatural, and we're  _very_ good at what we do."

"We're technically here on vacation," Velma said, "but when we heard that people were going missing here, we knew we had to check it out."

"Mystery solving never ends," Daphne said—and then she rolled her eyes and sighed. Something told Yusuke that she wasn't too happy to have her vacation interrupted. "All I wanted to do was soak in a nice hot spring, but now we're here, instead." Daphne eyed the dank, dingy room with obvious distaste. "This place is definitely  _not_  the spa."

Shaggy nodded so hard, Yusuke feared his head might pop off. "Yeah—like, zoinks!" He put his hand on Scooby's head, fingers scratching the dog's ears on reflex. "This isn't much of a vacation, is it, Scoob?"

The dog (that  _goddamn talking dog_  the  _gaijin_  didn't bat an eye at) shook his head. "Ruh-huh," he said in his garbled voice, leaning heavily against Shaggy's leg. Whites still showed all around the dog's eyes, tail tightly tucked between his legs. "Ro vacation rat rall!"

Kurama's mouth moved, almost imperceptibly, as he stared Scooby. "Ro ray-cay-shun at all…?" he murmured, and then he pinched his nose between two fingers and sighed.

Yusuke just crossed his arms and raised a brow. "OK," he said. "I guess all of that makes sense." His eyes narrowed as he stared at Fred. "Some name you all've got for your little detective business, though."

"Yeah." Kuwabara stood next to Yusuke, eyeing over the Mystery Inc. gang, squad, whatever-they-were with skepticism. "You said you're good at what you do, but not you're not actually very good at solving mysteries, now are you?"

Shaggy blinked a bit, confused; his ears found their way to Scooby's ears again. "Huh?"

The others all gasped, shocked at being insulted—but Daphne walked right up to Yusuke, heels clacking against the rotting floorboards, eyes as fiery as her red hair. "What's  _that_  supposed to mean?" she demanded with a glare.

Yusuke glared right back. "It  _means_  you can't be very good detectives when your demon is right under your freakin' nose."

Daphne—who reminded Yusuke more and more of Keiko as time went on, sharp glare and pretty face and all—bared her teeth. "Ex- _cuse_  me?"

Yusuke pointed at Scooby. "Him.  _That_." He performed a vigorous display of jazz-hands, sardonic smile like a gash across his face. "Celebrate, kids! Your search is over! You've got a demon  _right there!"_

All eyes turned to Scooby-Doo.

Scooby-Doo looked at everyone, perplexed.

A beat passed.

And then the lightbulb went off. Scooby-Doo dove to his belly, covered his eyes with his dinner-plate paws, and trembled against the dusty floor with a whimper of fear.

But was this show of cowardice an act, or a genuine expression of dread?

Only one way to find out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly if Keiko wasn't off in the background somewhere, Yusuke/Daphne would make a weird degree of sense.


	7. A Scary Night with a Glow Beast Fright

Different kinds of energies lit up in different ways.

Kuwabara's energy, bright and clean and yellow, felt like sunlight piercing through clouds. The energies of the  _gaijin_  all glowed more dimly than Kuwabara's power—but that was normal. It meant none of them were psychic or powered in any way, their energy glowing with the same steady but quiet pulse that characterized Keiko or Yusuke's mother. Meanwhile, Kurama's leaf green energy possessed a different sort of shine. Demonic energy was like a cutting laser, while human energy was like a radiant sun. If Yusuke had to put the difference in words, he'd say you  _saw_  demon energy, but you  _felt_  human energy.

And when Yusuke stretched out his energy and let it wash over the room, he could  _see_  bright blue energy haloing Scooby-Doo's bulky body, which still hunkered trembling upon the floor.

The members of Mystery Inc., unpowered as they were, scoffed when Yusuke, Kurama, and Kuwabara explained that demons were real, and they scoffed even harder at the claim that Scooby was one of them. Scooby was just a very special dog, they said. There was nothing supernatural about him whatsoever, they said. He was just unique, and rad, and groovy (Jesus Christ,  _groovy?_  What fuckin' year was it?), and a very helpful member of the team, they said.

"Like, seriously man," Shaggy said with a wheezing laugh. "Scooby isn't a demon. He's, like, totally one of us!"

Yusuke stared at Shaggy in utter disbelief. "He's a talking dog. Has no one ever found that strange?"

"What I find strange is the idea that demons are real," Velma said with maddening sincerity. "Mystery Inc. has exposed dozens of supposed 'monsters,' and every one of them has been part of a hoax."

"She's right," said Fred with that same clear-eyed determination. "None of the ghosts or monsters we've come across have been real. How do we know you're telling the truth about Scooby?"

"Your dog can  _fucking talk,_  you morons!"

Yet even in the face of Yusuke's solid (if not profane) logic, it was no use. The  _gaijin_ remained unmoved. Fred and Daphne and Velma and Shaggy just shook their heads and denied, denied, denied like a group of American politicians. Kurama cradled his own head in his hands, peering horrified at the  _gaijin_ from between his splayed fingers. Kuwabara walked to the nearest wall so he could lean on it, looking damn near about to faint from disbelief.

But Yusuke persisted. "Look at your dog," he demanded. "Look at your dog, and look back at me. Your dog has opposable thumbs. Your dog has a prehensile tail. Your dog can fucking  _talk._ " He threw up his hands when Fred only shrugged. "Has nobody pointed this out to you nut bags? Nobody? Not  _once?_  Is everyone in America an idiot or what?"

"Hey!" said Fred—but before he could retort, Velma put her hand on his arm.

"It's OK, Fred," she said. "I think I can explain this." Her eyes cut sideways behind their coke-bottle glasses. "Or, rather, I've got a hunch that  _Shaggy_  can."

All eyes turned to Shaggy.

Shaggy looked at everyone, perplexed.

A beat passed.

And then the lightbulb went off. Shaggy blanched, covered his eyes with his hands, and dove down next to Scooby to cower on the floor.

But was this show of cowardice an act, or a genuine expression of dread?

Yusuke had no idea.

Luckily Velma knew how to find out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay, parallel structure between this chapter's ending and the last one, yaaay.


	8. A Snack for Scooby-Doo (and also Shaggy)

Apparently Velma was accustomed to her friend's behavior, because all she did was roll her eyes at Shaggy's dramatic antics. "Oh, don't be like that," she said, kneeling beside him on the floor. Her hand alit between his shoulder blades, prompting him to look up at her with huge, watery eyes that begged for mercy. Velma remained unmerciful, however, saying: "I really think you can explain everything, Shaggy."

Shaggy appeared unconvinced. "Like—I can?"

"Yes." Velma offered him an encouraging smile. "Tell us how you first met Scooby-Doo."

Curiously, Shaggy looked at Scooby. Only when Scooby's lips curled upward into an eerily human smile (one that sent a shiver down Yusuke's spine; that dog was  _a whole lotta nope_ ) did Shaggy swallow, take a deep breath, and sit up.

"W-well, I was—" He swallowed again, running a hand over his fuzzy goatee. "I guess I was in middle school when he, like, came crashing through my window. He didn't have a collar or anything, but boy, the little guy was sure hungry." Shaggy smiled at the memory and gave another of his wheezing chuckles. "We downed a couple of pizzas together and've been best buddies ever since."

"Reah!" Scooby said, sitting up on his haunches with a beam of pride. "Rest ruddies!"

"And when did he first start talking?" Velma asked.

Shaggy's smile disappeared. So did Scooby-Doo's. They exchanged a long look, heavy with meaning Yusuke couldn't quite figure out (Hiei was the mind reader, not him—and where the hell was Hiei, anyway? Laughing at them while he watched this mess with his Jagan in a tree somewhere? Probably so, knowing that sadistic little edgelord).

Velma was likewise put off by the mysterious silence of her friends. "Shaggy," she said, voice full of stern warning. "Tell me.  _Now._ "

He put his hands over his face. "Like, I  _can't_ , Velma!"

Velma held up a large carton with a cartoon dog on the front, one she had  _not_  been holding before, and shook it. "Not even for a Scooby Snack?"

Kuwabara did a double-take. "Where the hell was she hiding that box?!"

It was a valid question. Her skirt was too short and her sweater not large enough to hide a bulky cardboard box, but Shaggy and Scooby (and Fred and Daphne by extension) didn't appear at all perturbed by the sudden manifestation of what Yusuke assumed were some form of dogs treats. In fact, Scooby and Shaggy both bolted to their feet in excitement, eyes lighting up as their tongue's lolled out of their mouths.

Yes. Even Shaggy's lolled. Which was  _really, really gross,_  Yusuke thought.

"A Rooby Rack?" Scooby said, dancing from paw to paw in place. "Roh boy roh boy roh boy—"

"A Scooby Snack?!" Shaggy said at the same time, and he rubbed his belly with a wistful smile. "Now we're talkin'! Like, it's hard to talk on an empty stomach."

What followed had Yusuke staring in abject amazement, and also horror, because this was horrifying and he hated it. Between Scooby's unnervingly human mannerism's and Shaggy's sudden hunger for dog treats, which Velma tossed to them as if tossing a tennis ball to a playful Rottweiler, he was having a hard time telling who was the dog (or dog-demon) and who was the human being. Shaggy crunched up the treat with the same enthusiasm as Scooby-Doo, and when both had had their snack, they sat leaning against each other's backs on the floor with contented sighs.

Kuwabara edged up to Yusuke, face pale. "What the in the ever lovin'  _heck_  is happening?" he whisper-screamed, but Yusuke truly was at a loss to say.

As always, none of the Mystery Inc. kids were at all bothered by Shaggy's penchant for dog food. Velma, eyes hard, just sat down next to Scooby and Shaggy on the floor again to ask, "Now that you've had your snack, let's try this again. Tell me one more time about the night you met Scooby."

Scooby and Shaggy shared another Look before Shaggy swallowed and started talking. "W-well. I was in my basement like I am on most Friday nights. I'd ordered a few pizzas—"

"Try a few  _dozen_ ," Fred muttered to Daphne, who giggled.

"—and was about to watch a totally groovy movie, when suddenly—"

Velma interjected, "Why had you ordered the pizzas, Shaggy?"

He blanched. "Um."

Velma stared at him. "Shaggy."

"Oh c'mon, Velma," he said with a nervous laugh. "You know I don't like to talk about—"

" _Shaggy."_

And under her hard stare, he crumbled. "Because I'd had a whole entire plate of my  _special_   _brownies_ , that's why!" Shaggy blurted, and he buried his face in his hands.

Beside him, Scooby-Doo face-palmed. Or face- _pawed_. Whatever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I mean did you REALLY think I wouldn't make weed jokes about the dude with the constant munchies wearing 70s bellbottoms? WHO DO YOU THINK I AM? But I promise there's a reason this is coming up.


	9. Jeepers, It's the Reefer!

Daphne sighed. "Oh,  _Shaggy_."

"It's really no wonder why you two are so hungry all the time," Fred said.

"You try to hide it," said Velma, "but we all know what goes into your special homemade Scooby Snacks."

Daphne leaned toward Yusuke, hand cupped around her mouth as she whispered. "It used to be brownies, but then he met Scooby. Chocolate is bad for dogs, so into the Scooby Snacks it goes."

Kuwabara was still staring open-mouthed at Shaggy, oblivious to the rest of the conversation. Soon he shook his head, though, and stammered, "W-wait. Are you saying you were high when you first met Scooby?"

"Like. Yeah." Shaggy scratched the back of his neck, eyes on the floor. "Like, really, really high."

"And that's… supposed to explain… how Scooby can… talk?" Kuwabara ground out, gears ticking and clicking behind his eyes.

"Yes." Velma pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. "Don't you see? That explains everything."

"Shaggy thought Scooby could talk because he was blazed out of his mind!" Fred added with a triumphant grin. "Mystery solved!"

Kuwabara, however, was not convinced. He looked between Velma and Fred, and Scooby and Shaggy, and Yusuke and Kurama in turns, putting together all the pieces—and coming up short, if Yusuke had to take a guess, because Yusuke wasn't sure what was going on, either. "… but what's that got to do with today?" Kuwabara eventually asked. "What does Shaggy getting high have to do with  _now?"_

Velma frowned. "I'm not sure I know what you mean."

"I mean, what's that go to do with  _today?"_  Kuwabara insisted. "With what's going on  _right now?_ "

"Kuwabara is right," Kurama said, voice cool and collected and calm but cracking at the edges with irritation. "I fail to see how Shaggy's past drug use explains our current situation regarding your talking companion."

Daphne shifted on her feet, uncertain. "What do you mean?"

"It explains everything about Scooby—namely why he can't be a demon," Fred said.

"He's a normal dog, and we hallucinate his speech," said Velma. "You get it now, right?"

"No," said Yusuke, "we don't."

Kurama had gone back to pinching the bridge of his nose, but he paused long enough to clear his throat and say, "Ask yourself this: Shaggy was high when he first met Scooby, and yes. That might be why Shaggy heard Scooby speaking upon their first encounter." His eyes flashed emerald green, luminous in the dim interior of Onigumo Manor. "But it does  _nothing_  to explain why Scooby is still talking  _today_."

Fred said, "What are you—?"

"Are all of us, myself and my friends included,  _high right now?"_

Shaggy opened his mouth.

Kurama eyed him askance. " _You_  shouldn't answer that, I suspect."

Shaggy closed his mouth again.

Fred, meanwhile, opened his, as did Daphne and Velma, but Kuwabara beat them all to the punch. "And before any of you tries to argue about how long a marijuana high lasts, trust me." He looped an arm around Kurama's neck, grinning. "Kurama here knows his plants."

"It's true." Yusuke grinned. "Say. You ever grow any good strains of Demon World weed we should know about, huh?"

Kurama looked very pointedly in another direction. "I'd prefer to leave my past in my past, thank you," he said, shoulders stiffening under Kuwabara's friendly arm. "Can we return to the matter at hand?"

"Oh my god." Kuwabara blanched. "That's a yes!"

Yusuke cackled while Kurama flushed. "420-blaze-it, eh, Kurama?"

His eyes flashed again.  _"I will end you both_ —but later." As Kuwabara and Yusuke took a hasty step backward, well aware of the trauma Kurama could inflict when sufficiently pissed off, Kurama's cool green gaze slid to the dog crouched before them on the floor. "Something tells me there's more afoot here than we've assumed… and I have a feeling it's all to do with Scooby Doo."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 420 BLAZE IT, EH, KURAMA? Also yes Velma is being illogical as heck but there's a reason for it. You'll see…


	10. A Gaggle of Gaping Gaijin

After Kurama pointed out the obvious hole in Velma and the rest of Mystery Inc.'s non-logic (specifically where it applied to marijuana-based explanations regarding Scooby Doo's ability to speak), something… shifted. The members of Mystery Inc. looked disturbed, like a puddle someone had ridden their bike through—but even as their perceptions buckled under the weight of reality, they still made half-hearted attempts to explain Scooby's speech away, clinging to their flawed awareness for absolutely no reason Yusuke could understand.

And Kurama understood even less. He explained the obvious to them over and over again, polite and civil and even-keeled to a fault, but with every word Kurama spoke, the vein in his temple pulsed just a little bit harder—and in the beat of that vein, Yusuke could read the subtext beneath what Kurama was saying like a message written in Morse code.

The subtext sounded something like: "NONE OF YOU ARE HIGH RIGHT NOW, GODDAMN IT. I AM NOT HIGH RIGT NOW, GODDAMN IT. MY FRIENDS ARE NOT HIGH RIGHT NOW, GODDAMN IT. AND EVEN IF WE  _WERE_  ALL HIGH RIGHT NOW, GODDAMMIT, YOUR DOG CAN FUCKING TALK AND THAT'S NOT FUCKING NORMAL. YOUR EXPLANATIONS, WEED-DEPENDENT OR OTHERWISE, DO NOT FUCKING CUT THE LOGICAL MUSTARD, SO PLEASE JOIN ME ON THIS PLANET AND PULL YOUR HEADS OUT OF YOUR COLLECTIVE  _GAIJIN_  ASSES AND RECOGNIZE THE FACT THAT  _YOUR DOG IS NOT A DOG AND ALL OF YOU ARE MORONS OF THE HIGHEST ORDER_."

But, y'know.

More politely, and stuff.

Scooby, who had been plenty talkative before, watched Kurama talk without saying much, white still showing all around his big brown irises. He'd crawled into Shaggy's lap, letting the human carry him like an overgrown, dog-shaped baby as Kurama tried over and over to get through to the confused  _gaijin_. His eyes got bigger and bigger as Kurama got closer and closer to making rational headway, and when understanding dawned on Velma's face like sun breaking through thick cloud, Scooby's eyes somehow grew even larger still.

"I—I think I get what you're saying," Velma said, staring at Scooby-Doo. "Shaggy was high. We weren't. And we haven't been high as Scooby continued to speak—and jinkies!" She gasped. "That means—"

Daphne blinked, rocking in place like she was waking from a sleepwalk. "Oh." A hand flew to her glossed lips. " _Oh!"_

Fred took a step backward, away from Scooby. "Wait just one minute, now!" he said, alarm making his voice rise.

Shaggy, too, seemed to be waking up at last. He stared up at Scooby (Scooby, big as he was, towered over Shaggy while sitting on the man's lap) and gaped. "Like— _zoinks!_  Scoob, can you really—?"

Scooby-Doo leapt from Shaggy's arms. Yusuke immediately shifted into an at-ready stance, index finger extending toward the dog, but the beast didn't attack. Hell, he didn't even bare his teeth. He just took a deep breath, barrel chest expanding, and threw back his head to bellow, "SCOOBY-DOOBY- _DOOOOOO!_ "

Everyone in the room froze. Velma, Shaggy, Fred and Daphne stiffened, eyes glassy and unseeing. Yusuke tried to move, to go to the  _gaijin_  and check to see if they'd passed out on their feet—but his arms and legs stayed still. They didn't budge.

But Yusuke wasn't alarmed by this. Nah. This wasn't bothersome at all. It was totally OK, actually. Pleasant, even, to be standing there unable to move. It was about as pleasant as hearing Scooby-Doo talk, in fact. Gosh, was it cool to meet a talking dog. Scooby was a special dog. A  _groovy_  dog, even. He was a groovy mutt with a rad voice and—

Behind Yusuke, Kurama muttered, "We're being brainwashed."

And just like that, the cloying thoughts about groovy talking dogs scattered. Yusuke's hand swung upward, aiming the beginnings of a Spirit Gun at Scooby-Doo—the dog who was staring at Kurama, Yusuke and Kuwabara without flinching, his tail moving back and forth, back and forth in purposeful circles through the air.

"Rack.  _Roff_ ," Scooby-Doo rumbled—and when he at last bared his tombstone teeth, Yusuke felt tempted to obey.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The truth is coming out, slowly but surely… also "Rack roff" is "Back off" in Scooby-speak. Yaaaay.


	11. A Clue About Scooby-Doo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which certain facts are brought to light.

Kurama's eyes were normally the color of new leaves, but just then, they appeared as dark as the deepest forest. "So I was right," he said as he carefully studied Scooby. "We are being brainwashed." His head inclined the barest fraction. "But that only makes sense."

Kuwabara blinked. "It does?"

"Yes. I first suspected it during the fracas in the hallway."

"Say what?" Yusuke yelped.

"Even for your big brain, that's saying a lot," said Kuwabara, likewise impressed.

Kurama paused a moment. "… thank you, I suppose." He turned his dark-forest eyes back to Scooby-Doo. "We have traversed a house with architecture that seemingly bent reality once before, but even the House of Four Dimensions couldn't connect two doors on opposite sides of a hall. Something was bending our perception." Here his eyes narrowed. "Something, or some _one_."

Scooby-Doo hunkered closer to the floor, teeth still bared, eyes nearly rolling backward in his head as he loosed a rumbling growl. Yusuke only smirked, however, not scared of the beast at all. Leave it to Kurama to figure this shit out, huh? This was why Kurama was the team tactician. It'd take more than this dog's cheap tricks to pull one over on the ol' fox, that was for sure.

"But from the hallway alone, I couldn't be sure that we were being manipulated," Kurama continued. "No. It was the belligerent denial of Scooby's supernatural abilities on the part of Mystery Inc. that confirmed my suspicions, even before Scooby saw fit to try and control us." Now his eyes resembled twin spots of green fire, unsettling and captivating all at once as he trained them squarely on the dog. "Scooby-Doo. You are a low-level demon with the psychic ability to manipulate and control the thoughts of others. Isn't that right?"

For a minute, Yusuke was certain Scooby would try to deny it.

But Scooby-Doo did not. Instead he merely nodded, a gesture too human not to flip Yusuke's stomach over. "Rats right," the dog said between his bared teeth.

"And you've been using your powers on Mystery Inc. for years, from the sound of it." Kurama crossed his arm, tone as dry as sandpaper on the skin—but thoughtful, too, as he puzzled out the truth of Scooby-Doo. "I imagine at this point it takes very little effort on your part to manipulate their thoughts. They've become so accustomed to thinking as you wish them to, they do it naturally, almost of their own accord. That's why I had to go to such incredible logical lengths to get through to them. Their thoughts have been manipulated to a point almost past reparation, and they actively resist efforts to correct their erroneous observations."

"Wow," said Kuwabara.

"That's awful," said Yusuke.

"Regular humans are also likely easy targets. I suspect you emit a constant psionic field that influences nearby humans to accept your speech without question." Kurama was the one to bare his teeth, then, in a smile so cold even Yusuke shivered. "Too bad for you, we are no so easily persuaded. When we were not taken in by your tricks, you had to directly try to—"

Scooby growled again. "Reave us rarone."

"What'd he say?" Kuwabara said.

"'Leave us alone,'" Kurama supplied. "He replaces letters with the letter R at the start of most words. Rhotic replacement, I believe it's called, though perhaps the diagnosis of—"

Scooby didn't like being analyzed. "Rust—rust reave rus rarone!" he snarled, tail lashing through the air behind him. "Reave rus _rarone!"_

Kuwabara's face screwed up. "Us?"

Yusuke just swaggered forward, planting his feet beneath him with a scowl. "What, so you can keep tricking these people into taking care of you?" he snarked. "Sorry, buddy, but we're not in the habit of letting demons like you run amok." He grasped one wrist in his opposite hand. "So come with us quietly, or—"

Yusuke raised his finger. The tip glowed brilliant, electric blue, casting deep shadows throughout the dingy room—and putting spots of neon glow into the depths of Scooby-Doo's eyes. The dog shrank back beneath that light, eyes growing ever larger as the size of Yusuke's Spirit Gun grew.

But Yusuke never got the chance to attack.

Before he could fire upon the demon named Scooby-Doo, Kuwabara stepped purposefully between them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kurama is being his usual sharp self. Kuwabara is also being his usual self, but you'll see what he's up to next time. Also "rhotic replacement" is indeed the name of Scooby's speech quirk, based on an article I read by a speech pathologist. I thought I'd work it into the fic because I found it super interesting.


	12. The Howl of the Fright-Hound

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kuwabara shows he's not exclusively a cat person...

Although Kuwabara had stepped between Yusuke and Scooby with a particularly dead-set expression on his face (one Yusuke recognized from that one time Kuwabara tried to let Toguro kill him, among other incidences; it was, of course Kuwabara's Most Annoying Expression Ever™), Kuwabara still gulped when Yusuke didn't immediately lower his Spirit Gun. He raised his arms wide, blocking Yusuke's approach, and over Kuwabara's shoulder Yusuke saw Scooby-Doo's face morph into a vision of pure and utter shock. Kurama, meanwhile, just looked vaguely annoyed, but that was his customary reaction to Yusuke and Kuwabara's shenanigans.

Yusuke's customary reaction to Kuwabara's shenanigans was to gape at Kuwabara and the lob insults. "Hey!" he barked. "What's the big idea, asshole?!"

But Kuwabara didn't rise to Yusuke's name-calling. "Oh, shut it, Urameshi," was all he said, and he waved vaguely behind himself at Scooby. "Can't you see?"

"See what?"

"Scooby-Doo." Kuwabara swallowed again, determination keeping his features firm. "He might be doing exactly what Kurama said and tricking everybody, sure, but… look close."

Yusuke grumbled something under his breath about Kuwabara being a supreme dumbass, but in spite of his misgivings, he did as Kuwabara asked—and his eyes widened.

"He's shaking like a leaf," Kuwabara said, tone firm. "Has been for a while now."

And it was true: Though Scooby-Doo still bared his teeth, he'd slunk low to the ground, belly very nearly touching the rotting floorboards of Onigumo Manor, and in his knobbly joints Yusuke detected a pronounced tremor. The whites showed all around Scooby's eyes, too. If Scooby hadn't already copped to being a demon, he'd be the very portrait of a frightened (but still misshapen) Great Dane.

Not that Yusuke would admit that to Kuwabara. "Yeah, so?" he said, not lowering his Gun. "Why should I care?"

"You should care because he's _scared_ , Urameshi!" Kuwabara threw up his hands when Yusuke still refused to budge. "And he didn't ask us to leave _him_ alone. He said _us_." Kuwabara shook his head, finding his words one by painstaking one. "He—he _cares_ about Mystery Inc. If Scooby was a bad guy, he'd be trying to save his own skin, not take care of some random humans."

"Kuwabara," Kurama slowly said. "Did Scooby's brainwashing, perhaps, succeed in your case?"

"What?! _No!_ Gosh, way to have faith in me, huh?"

"Apologies," Kurama said, though he didn't look particularly apologetic at all (Yusuke couldn't help but snigger). "But perhaps Scooby was scared due to the output of Yusuke's considerable strength."

Kuwabara stuck his nose in the air. "Nope. I don't think that's it."

"You don't—"

He threw up his hands again. "Would you just _trust me_ , or what?"

Yusuke started to tell Kuwabara that he could take his cockamamie theories and shove them where the sun don't shine—but he couldn't bring himself to say that, because dammit, Kuwabara was usually right about mushy garbage like this, wasn't he? Time and again, Kuwabara had been right about their enemies' various unspoken motivations and complexities, and something about the unwavering glimmer in Kuwabara's eye told Yusuke that Kuwabara was pretty sure he was right about Scooby, too. Yusuke hated to admit it (because Kuwabara got particularly annoying whenever he proved Yusuke wrong about something) but…

Yusuke shot Kurama a sidelong glance.

Kurama sighed.

Kurama shrugged.

Yusuke lowered his hand, the Spirit Gun glimmering one last time before fading from view. Far as Yusuke was concerned, if Kurama was willing to humor Kuwabara for a minute or two, Yusuke would be willing, too. They could always try and catch Scooby if he ran away or something, right? Or—

Movement drew Yusuke's eye. He looked sharply down at Scooby-doo, gripping his wrist in case he needed to fire his Spirit Gun, but Scooby hadn't tried to make a break for it.

All Scooby-Doo had done with crawl on his belly toward Shaggy, so he could pillow his enormous head on the oblivious Shaggy's knee and stare up at him with huge, watery eyes in wistful silence.

Yusuke let his Gun fade again.

Well, shit. Maybe Kuwabara was right, after all.

Kuwabara didn't waste any time. He dropped to his butt and scooted across the floor toward Scooby, holding up his hands and stopping his approach when the dog spotted him and flinched. Kuwabara wore a big ol' smile on his face, encouraging and approachable like he was trying to charm a stray cat… or in this case a dog, dog demon, whatever.

"Hey, little guy," Kuwabara said. Baby-talking, like Scooby was just a mutt and not a demon capable of brainwashing humans into doing his bidding (or maybe Kuwabara was just conveniently forgetting that little tidbit so he could prove Yusuke wrong; ugh, that _shithead_ ). "It's OK. Why don't you tell us why you're here, huh?"

Scooby didn't move. His eyes flickered from Shaggy to Kuwabara to Yusuke and back again, roving in a frantic circle across the room.

"I don't think you're a bad perso—I mean, dog. I mean, demon. Um." Kuwabara scratched the back of his neck with a nervous, but genuine, laugh—and at that sound, Scooby's eyes widened again. "I just promise I'll listen to whatever you have to say. All right, Scooby?" He smiled even bigger. "Wanna talk to me, huh?"

Scooby stared at Kuwabara for a long while in silence.

Then, without preamble, the dog-who-was-not-a-dog burst into big, wet, gulping, hiccupy tears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kuwabara is my favorite and this is why. Next time: The Truth of Scooby-Doo.


	13. The Secret of the Demon Dog

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Scooby tells his tale.

It took a while to get used to Scooby-Doo's speech impediment, but with the help of Kurama's quick translations, Scooby eventually managed to tell them the story of his life.

Kurama's deductions had been mostly on the money (but that was to be expected). Scooby was a low-level demon, which meant the ironically dog-eat-dog Demon World was no picnic for Scooby-Doo. His psionic abilities weren't good for fighting, best-used instead to brainwash weaklings into leaving him alone. When his powers failed to do that, they could confuse the senses of stronger demons long enough for Scooby to run away when the going got really tough. The bit with the hallway they'd witnessed? Yeah, Scooby had the art of bamboozlement mastered—but surviving wasn't _living_ , at least as far as Scooby figured. He wanted comfort. Warmth. Happiness. And he wasn't going to find those things in Demon World.

So he left.

When he heard that one of the random portals to Human World had opened nearby, long before the barrier between worlds permanently came down thanks to Yusuke and company, he took advantage of the opportunity and hightailed it the hell out of dodge. Scooby ran to Human World, where humans as weak as or even weaker than Scooby lived, and he'd slunk about on the fringes of their society—observing and watching and waiting for a chance to integrate himself—until he realized something. Something _big_.

Scooby-Doo looked like one of the dogs of Human World.

And do you know what humans seem to love more than almost anything else in the whole entire Human World?

Yeah. That's right.

_Dogs_.

If Scooby walked down the street, people tried to feed him. Pet him. Give him a place to sleep. And if people didn't immediately offer him those things of their own accord, it was as easy (and as tasty) as pie to use his powers to _make them_ want to give him Scooby whatever it was he wanted. And yeah, sure, there were dogcatchers who tried to round up strays out there, but they were easy to confuse and evade with a quick burst of psychic willpower.

Not that his life was all roses once he got to Human World and made his convenient discovery. It was hard to get humans to overlook the fact that he could talk, for instance, and some bits of his anatomy didn't _quite_ match up with that of a dog (dog tails are not typically prehensile, a fact Scooby learned the hard way). People often ran away screaming when they realized he wasn't just a dog, but necessity is the mother of intention, and eventually Scooby learned to manipulate humans with enough practice. A constant field of psychic influence did the blend-in trick nicely.

Let's just say Scooby took the phase "Man's Best Friend" very, very literally once he figured out how to make everyone love him.

And that's when Scooby met Shaggy.

Meeting Shaggy had been an accident. Scooby had slipped up, letting his psychic field lapse long enough to give himself away, and he had been on the run from a particularly nasty research scientist when he crash-landed in Shaggy's basement, desperate for a place to hide. But he'd been too frazzled to use his powers to make Shaggy accept it when he started talking, and for a minute Scooby thought he'd have to go on the run again… but Shaggy didn't bat an eye. He just grinned, called Scooby "one groovy pupperoo," and offered him a slice of pizza, which Scooby dazedly—but happily—accepted.

Of course, Shaggy had been a _bit_ more concerned about the whole this-dog-can-talk thing when his marijuana high started to wear off, but that wasn't the point. Shaggy was _nice_ , and for just a little while, he had accepted Scooby-Doo—every last, weird part of him— without any kind of hesitation.

Scooby had never experienced that before. Never in his entire _life_ had he been given such a warm welcome. Shaggy had offered food and a comfy bed without needing to be brainwashed, and to Scooby, that was…

That was…

There weren't any words to describe precisely what that was, nor what that meant to Scooby Doo.

And so, Scooby-Doo stayed.

And Shaggy—loving, wonderful, accepting, food-giving Shaggy—never gave him a reason to leave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rather than subject you to many-hundred words of "Ran ren rye rent roo rhe Ruman Rorld," which would get SUPER OBNOXIOUS SUPER FAST, I just wrote this out in plain English. Hope that's chill. It gets the point across, at least.


	14. Scooby-Doo and a Mommy, Too

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kurama ~feels things.~

By the time he was done speaking (and drying his weepy eyes on his noodle-flexible tail, a sight honestly made Yusuke feel a bit queasy), Scooby had allowed Kuwabara to come close enough to pet his ears. The dog still pillowed his bulbous head on Shaggy's knee, though. Kuwabara watched the dog with pity. Kurama looked at Scooby in silence, face devoid of emotion, expression tightly controlled and blank—but Yusuke could see the tension at the corners of his eyes, smoothed over so perfectly it gave itself away in the very act of being erased.

Eyes locked on Shaggy's face, Scooby heaved a heavy sigh. "Rey're ry ramily," he said in his crumbling voice. "Ry rove rem."

"He said, they're my family," Kurama translated. "I love them."

"Yeah," said Yusuke. "I got that."

"Ry re rhyme ry roved rem, rit ras roo rate ro rell rem roo ry really ras."

"By the time I loved them, it was too late to tell them who I really was."

"Yeah. I got that one, too."

But Kuwabara's nose wrinkled. "Well, _I_ don't get it."

"Rut?" Scooby's head lifted from Shaggy's knee, eyes round with alarm. "Rut ron't roo ret?"

"Why not tell them anyway?" Kuwabara said—and when Scooby only hesitated, chin descending to Shaggy's knee again, Kuwabara's frown deepened. "They love you. You love them. They'd still love you no matter where you came from, right?"

Scooby's morose face fell. "Rell…"

"No." Kuwabara shook his head, voice firm. "They would. That's what friends do for each other. Right?"

Scooby said nothing for a moment. He only had eyes for Shaggy, studying his blank-faced friend as if trying to read the future in the scruff on Shaggy's chin. Eventually, though, Scooby shook his head. The movement was slight, so subtle Yusuke almost missed it, but the dog definitely, definitely shook his head.

"Rhyme rot so rure," Scooby said.

"I'm not so sure," said Kurama at almost the same time. Practically, in fact, in unison. Yusuke was not certain if Kurama was translating Scooby's speech or simply speaking his own mind.

Kuwabara shook his head again. "But, Scooby," he insisted. "If you were just honest with them, I'm sure they would—"

"Rit's roo rate." Even through his speech impediment and despite his hushed words, Scooby's soft denial cut through the quiet like a blade. "Ry've raited roo rong. Rand ry've rainrashed rem ror ro rong…" He shuddered, bulky body quaking. "Rey right reel retrayed. Rand ry rouldn't rand ro ree rhat rook ron reir races." He shuddered again, harder this time. "Ry rouldn't rand ro ree rhem rook rat re rhat ray."

"OK, that one I didn't get." Yusuke turned to Kurama, brow cocked. "Can you transla—? Oh."

Kurama looked like he'd been kicked in the gut by a Clydesdale.

Yusuke started to ask why—and then it hit him.

What had Kurama said to Yusuke on a certain rooftop, long ago, under the light of a full moon? What had Kurama said about breaking his mother's spirit, a mirror that could grant wishes clutched tightly in his hand? That mirror, the Forlorn Hope…

It had reflected Kurama's heart's desire back then as completely as Scooby-Doo's dilemma reflected Kurama's own today.

For a long time, Yusuke stood there in silence.

Then Yusuke started to say something.

Then Yusuke started to say _anything_.

But before he could, the object in his pocket began to ring.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What, you mean you signed up for a crackfic and not a trip aboard the Feels Train? Well too late muthafuckas, we just choo-chooed straight to Kurama's Angst City, WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT MY DEVIOUS BAIT AND SWITCH? And what's in Yusuke's pocket? Find out next time!


	15. Mystery Machine Mix-Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Yusuke takes a call.

"Yusuke. _Yusuke_. YUSUKE, I know you can hear—"

"Yeah, yeah, pipe down," Yusuke grumbled as he flicked open his Communication Mirror. "What do you want?"

Koenma's pudgy features, arranged around the shiny nub end of a spherical pacifier, telegraphed supreme annoyance. "I _want_ to tell my Detective more information about his case," he said, sarcasm dripping from every word. "But if that's _inconvenient_ for you—"

Yusuke dug a finger in his ear. "Anyone ever tell you you're really dramatic for a toddler?"

A very adult vein pulsed in Koenma's young temple. "SHUT UP."

"I mean, I didn't think you could take a theater class until at least middle school…"

"BE QUIET, I MEAN IT."

Yusuke snickered. Meanwhile, Kuwabara stepped in front of Scooby-Doo, who looked alarmed as he peered at Yusuke around Kuwabara's legs. Kurama (who suddenly wore quite a fierce and protective expression on his face) gestured for Scooby to get low, and then he gestured for Yusuke to angle the mirror so it wouldn't show any members of Mystery Inc., all of whom were still standing around like zombies under the influence of Scooby's well-intentioned brainwashing.

"Now, if you're done mocking me, I have information for you. I trust you'll make good use of it." Koenma proffered a folder, words written on its front too small for Yusuke to read on the Communication Mirror's tiny screen. "We caught wind of the demon and assigned your case too quickly to do proper preemptive research, but as you travelled to Onigumo Manor, I had Jorge ransack the archives for any information he could scrounge up, and he managed to uncover something juicy. It seems Jorge is, against all odds, actually good for something."

"Oh, Koenma-sir," wept a gravelly voice from off camera. "So cruel!"

"Lemme guess," Yusuke said. "The energy signature belongs to a demon who looks an awful lot like a really big talking dog. Is that it?"

"What?" Koenma blinked a few times, brow furrowing. Then he sputtered, "No! What in the _world_ would give you that idea?"

"Wait." Now it was Yusuke's turn to blink, confused. "You mean the demon doesn't look like—?"

"A dog? Hardly." Koenma opened the folder and held its contents up. "We'll have to talk about your harebrained theories later, Yusuke, but for now, feast your eyes on this."

Even on a small screen, it was easy to see what Koenma wanted to show him—namely an old-fashioned drawing of a crimson demon. A really _big_ demon with a leering face and horns curling from its head. It had yellow eyes and a mouth full of sharp teeth, not to mention a long tail, and its fingers were tipped in curling black claws that looked sharp enough to tear steel to bits.

"OK," Yusuke deadpanned. "So it looks like a walking butthole and not a dog."

Koenma blanched. "I wouldn't put it so crudely, but… yes."

Kuwabara walked over and looked at the screen over Yusuke's shoulder. His eyes bugged out at once. "Wait," he said, grabbing the mirror to take a closer look. " _That's_ the demon we're looking for?"

"Indeed. That is what I _just said_ , if I recall the past thirty seconds correctly," said Koenma.

Kurama came over to study the mirror as well. "I don't understand." His eyes traveled across the room. "If _that_ is the demon we're looking for…"

Yusuke concluded, expression grim: "Then who the heck is Scooby-Doo supposed to be?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First the plot thickened. Now it's… congealed. Oops.


	16. A Demon Scare is No Fair

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Yusuke's call is interrupted.

Somehow, even through the barrier of the screen between them, Koenma managed to glance at Kurama, Yusuke and Kuwabara in turns, pinning them each with an incensed glare. "Scooby _who?_ " he demanded, tiny toddler arms crossing. "What on earth are you three blathering on about over there?"

"Nothing!" Yusuke yelped, and he gave a nervous laugh. "Why don't you tell us more about the big scary monster, huh, Koenma?"

"If you insist." He dove back into his explanation with gusto. "The energy signature that tipped us off to the presence of a demon seemed quite a bit smaller than what you would expect of a creature like this, admittedly, but in local legend, a demon of this description was said to wander the forest when Onigumo Manor was first constructed. It stands to reason this must be the demon you're looking for."

"I see. So you think this demon is the one abducting hikers in the area?" said Kurama.

"Yes. It does appear to be the man-eating type."

(Kuwabara ducked to one side, out of view of the mirror. "You, uh… you don't eat people, do ya?" he whispered at Scooby-Doo.

Scooby's nose wrinkled. "Ruh-ruh. Ruh- _ruh_. Rew. _Ross!"_ )

"Demons are long lived as a general rule, of course, so my theory is that the demon returned to its home recently." Koenma sat back in his chair, stroking his chin in thought. "Naturally it resided near Onigumo Manor before the barrier between the worlds was first erected, and now it has come back to—"

Kurama looked away from the mirror, but Yusuke was too busy trying to commit everything Koenma was rapid-fire telling him to memory to figure out why. He just grunted when Kurama muttered "Yusuke" in a low voice, the urgency in his tone not really registering at all.

It didn't register with Koenma, either. "Don't interrupt me, Kurama; I'm not finished." Koenma cleared his throat. "As I was saying, the demon you're looking for will most likely resemble the depiction I showed you. I suspect that the demon has returned—"

"Uh." Kuwabara cleared his throat, too. "Yusuke?"

Koenma kept talking through gritted teeth. "— _has returned_ to its ancestral lands after the barrier came down again in recent years, because even demons are capable of homesickness, and—"

"Roo-suke," Scooby said, teeth chattering.

"What?!" Yusuke said. He tore his eyes from the screen to glare at his friends, but then he saw that all of them were looking at something across the room—and when he looked, too, the bottom dropped out of his stomach. "Oh," he said, because there was little else to say.

"Oh? What do you _mean_ , oh?" Koenma snapped. "I _said_ that don't like being interrupted, Yusuke, so—"

Yusuke turned the Communication Mirror around to give Koenma a view of what the rest of them were looking at.

For a beat, Koenma said nothing.

Then: "Ah. I see." He picked up the folder with the demon's picture and tapped against the desk to settle the papers inside. "Well, Yusuke. I think it goes without saying that you ought to start running now." His brow lifted. "Wouldn't you agree?"

Yusuke snapped the Mirror shut. He slipped it into his pocket, eyes fixed on the enormous red demon standing in the doorway—and as Yusuke clocked the way the demon's sharp horns brushed the very top of the door's tall frame, the creature loosed an infuriated roar.


	17. A Night of Fright is a Total Delight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the going gets tough and the tough get... oh fuck it you know the rest

As soon as the demon roared, Kurama and Kuwabara and Yusuke fell into defensive stances, years of experience and training taking over without a single conscious thought. Scooby leapt to Shaggy's side, cowering behind the man with teeth chattering loudly enough to be mistaken for maracas—but when the demon tried to step through the doorway toward them, its horns (which crowned the very top of its nine-foot-high body) bumped against the doorframe. The creature snarled and backed up a step, attempting to walk through the door slouched over sideways, but its enormous barrel chest once more impeded its progress into the room.

Not that Scooby was complaining. As the demon struggled to advance, Scooby crept out from behind Shaggy on trembling legs, crawling to a spot in the middle of the various scattered members of Mystery Inc. There he took a deep breath, raised a paw, and snapped his… paw pads? They certainly weren't fingers, but the point was that holy _shit_ he had dexterous paws with what looked like opposable thumbs on them? And he snapped them just like a human would, easy as pie.

As soon as he did so, all members of Mystery Inc. blinked. A chorus of confused, pained groans rang out as they clutched their heads, squinting at Scooby-Doo as if he radiated blinding light.

"Wha…?" Shaggy said. "Like, where am I?"

Daphne rubbed her temples. "Last thing I remember is walking through a big set of doors, and then…"

"That's right!" Fred said, one finger rising triumphant into the air. "We were investigating the disappearances around Onigumo Manor!"

"The ones the locals said were caused by a demon!" Velma concurred as she shook the cobwebs from her head.

"But like, demons don't exist." Shaggy began to gnaw on his fingernails. A beat passed, and then he asked with marked uncertainty: " _Do_ they?"

A moment of silence passed.

And then the demon's horns hit the doorframe again, and the heads of Mystery Inc. swiveled toward the sound, and Yusuke surrepitously readied the beginnings of a Spirit Gun where the vanilla humans couldn't see it. Not that they were paying attention to him just then, of course.

"Jinkies!" Velma said, backpedaling away from the door.

"It's the demon of Onigumo Manor!" Daphne exclaimed as she did the same.

"Zoinks!" said Shaggy—and Scooby leapt into Shaggy's arms so Shaggy could cradle him like a baby, Scooby clinging to Shaggy's neck. Nose to nose with Scooby-Doo, Shaggy groaned, "I've got a bad feeling about this, Scoob!"

"Beat it, gang!" Fred commanded, and Mystery Inc. proceeded to bolt for the room's only other door.

Yusuke followed, of course—partially because Yusuke didn't want the rickety manor to come crashing down on their friggin' heads if they fought the demon, and partially because he got the sense that Mystery Inc. would get themselves into trouble without someone to babysit their _gaijin_ asses. He motioned for Kuwabara and Kurama to follow, and they did so, but not before Kurama reached into his hair and pulled out a seed. This he chucked at the door; vines erupted from it when it hit the ground, covering the doorway in a latticework of foliage Yusuke suspected was either poisonous, or carnivorous, or both. He didn't ask; he didn't actually want to know what kind of shit Kurama kept in his hair. Some things are just better left unsaid.

Kurama fell into step beside him as they chased after Mystery Inc. "I've bought us some time, but the vines won't hold for long," he said as they ran. "This just got complicated."

"Yeah," said Yusuke, eyes forward on the fleeing _gaijins'_ retreating backs. "But I've got a plan."

Kuwabara fell into step on Yusuke's other side. "Let me guess," he said. "Protect the _gaijin_?"

"Yup."

"Keep the dog's secret?" sad Kuwabara.

Kurama's eyes glittered. "Yes."

"Kick the demon of Onigumo Manor's ass?" Yusuke asked.

"But of course," Kurama said through a small smile.

"Right." Yusuke grinned. "Let's get to it."

But before Yusuke could put on a burst of speed and catch up with the gaijin (to herd them to a safe spot, or to use them as bait, or whatever; his plan hadn't progressed that far yet) Scooby dropped back from the pack. "Rey. Rey!" he said, running backwards on his hind legs with disturbing grace. "Risten!" Scooby jerked an inexplicable thumb at his chest. "Ret rus randle ris."

"Say _what?!"_

Shaggy looked at them over his shoulder, face panicked but firm. "Like, zoinks! Listen to Scoob, OK?"

"Shaggy's right!" said Fred, grinning his fearless leader grin.

"Mystery Inc. deals with stuff like this every day!" said Velma.

"We've got this!" said Fred.

"So you boys just sit back and watch, got it?" Daphne added with a wink.

For a moment, Yusuke started to argue with them.

But then he grinned, because Scooby gave him a sly and exaggerated wink—and Yusuke got the feeling that the _gaijin_ and their demon dog had as many tricks up their sleeves as Kurama had seeds in his hair. Although he wouldn't ask Kurama about the latter, he was morbidly curious about the former.

"OK," he said. "OK, then. What the hell?" He let out a whoop of a laugh, excitement bubbling in his blood. "Show me what you got, Scoob!"

Scooby grinned.

Scooby winked again.

And Scooby got to work.


	18. The Backstage Rage (of the Fire Demon, Part 01)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Hiei observes.

Perched in a tree outside of Onigumo Manor, Hiei watched.

Hiei watched, and Hiei laughed his ass off.

Hiei wasn't the type to guffaw in view of others. No; he had a surly image to maintain, which is why the Jagan was such a delight at times like these. It afforded him a bird's eye view of the ridiculous cases the toddler king liked to assign the detective—cases like the one involving the idiot _gaijin_ and their demon of a dog, for instance. While Yusuke and the others approached Onigumo Manor earlier that evening, Hiei had installed himself in the branches of a nearby tree to observe. He'd step in when they inevitably needed him to intervene, and not a minute sooner.

And a good thing, too, because getting to watch the whole deranged mess from afar was _deliciously_ entertaining—and it became even more so when the _gaijin_ and their dog took the reins and ran with them.

The dog was the mastermind of the whole thing, of course. No sooner did Scooby enter another hallway of doors did he initiate a mad scramble of a chase through them, wielding psionic powers to confuse and befuddle the demon into thinking the _gaijin_ could defy the laws of physics. Yusuke, Kurama and Kuwabara stood back and watched the debacle play out from the end of the hallway, witnessing firsthand Scooby-Doo's impressive abilities with appreciative applause.

But the demon wouldn't be swayed by that trick for very long. Psychic confusion only lasted until the affected party got their bearings, and the demon found theirs quickly enough… but Scooby-Doo was no slouch. As soon as the demon cornered Scooby in a derelict room, Scooby pulled another trick from his metaphorical hat, slamming the demon with a burst of psychic energy arranged into a single, inescapable image:

A barber's chair.

The moment the demon chased Scooby-Doo into a dead end, Scooby had conjured the image of a barber's chair, a barber's striped maypole, and a mirror with a set of trimmers lying beside it on a silver tray. Hiei, who had never set foot in a barber shop in his life, knew what these things were because Scooby _wanted him to_. The dog-demon had embroidered the images with meaning; even though Hiei was not the target of the images, simply witnessing them from afar was enough to plant the meanings of the images indelibly into his head.

"A testament to the beast's skill, indeed!" Hiei remarked to himself with a mocking laugh. "But to what end will he aim this ruse?"

Scooby (who suddenly wore an illusory apron and striped shirt, a handlebar mustache decorating the end of his brown muzzle) gestured for the demon to sit at the barber's chair. The demon did so without argument, walking into Scooby's conjured scenario like an actor walking purposefully onto a stage set. Such was the power of Scooby's sway, Hiei mused as the demon sat in the chair, allowed Scooby to tie a smock around their neck and cover the demon's face with illusory shaving cream. The dog could convince even aggressive demons to play right into his paw!

But it didn't end there. Scooby gave the demon a shave, trimmed his hair, even gave him a hot towel face treatment—and then he _asked the demon to pay him for his services._ The demon patted his haunches while Hiei chortled, searching for a wallet in pockets he didn't own, and when he shrugged at Scooby to indicate he couldn't pay, Scooby's outfit changed. Suddenly he wore a police officer's uniform, and then it was _Scooby_ chasing the _demon_ , waving a nightstick at the creature and shouting with his garbled affectation for the demon to "Rop, rin rhe rame ruv rhe raw!"

It was, of course, an utterly ridiculous sight to behold—but as Hiei laughed hard enough to nearly pitch him out of the tree and to the ground below, he noticed that Scooby wasn't the only one in the house pulling off a neat little trick.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hiei likes to pretend he's above all this. He is not. He is delighted, but like hell will he ever admit it. (Also the random scenarios Scooby can somehow convince "ghosts" and "ghouls" to play along with HAD TO MAKE AN APPEARANCE. At least now we know why he can pull the wool over people's eyes the way he does...)


	19. The Backstage Rage (of the Fire Demon, Part 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Hiei observes more because he's predictable and I'm tired of writing these summaries.

To Hiei, it had become apparent that for all Scooby-Doo claimed he had met Shaggy accidentally, the dog had selected (or, perhaps, molded) his humans with care.

While Scooby distracted the demon with his brainwashing tricks, the humans got going. The two women and the blond man didn't waste time watching their friend Scooby work (not the way Yusuke, Kurama and Kuwabara did, standing in the doorway to ogle Scooby's illusions with jaws dropped). The three aforementioned _gaijin_ instead began a thorough and methodical search of Onigumo Manor, moving from top to bottom and from back to front as if they'd planned their attack beforehand. "Jinkies! It's a clue!" the woman with the spectacles at one point proclaimed, but Hiei wasn't interested enough to note whatever it was she'd found. Instead he preferred a more holistic view of the proceedings, noting the ease with which they coordinated their search as Scooby kept the demon occupied. For all that Scooby's actions spoke of improvisation, it was clear to Hiei that the _gaijin_ and their 'dog' had done things like this a thousand times before.

The tall _gaijin_ with the goatee knew what he was doing, too. When the demon finally realized how Scooby had turned the tables on it, it let loose a roar and began to pursue Scooby through the halls—but the tall _gaijin_ with the ridiculous name was ready. When Scooby turned a sharp corner, Shaggy hauled Scooby into the shadows of a suit of armor and threw his voice into a door across the hall. The demon followed the noise into the room (that _idiot!_ ), and together Shaggy and Scooby took the suit of armor's sword and used it to barricade the door behind the demon.

Neat. Simple. Practiced.

These _gaijin_ were more than just some meddling kids. Or at least it seemed that way to Hiei.

These _gaijin_ were _capable_. And Hiei was not the sort to dole compliments out to humans without them having earned it.

His impression only solidified when the two women and the blond man, on the other side of the house, began to scheme. As Shaggy and Scooby kept the demon corralled, barricading the door with all the furniture they could find as the demon battered at the door from within, the other _gaijin_ began to construct a trap within the bowels of the house. It was a needlessly complicated trap that involved greasing the floors and rigging chandeliers to fall when a tripwire was triggered, but something told Hiei that the construction of horrifically complicated traps, too, was something at which the _gaijin_ excelled.

Yusuke, however, had less confidence in the _gaijin_ than did Hiei (a notion Hiei most assuredly would have scoffed at before that night; _Hiei_ , having more faith in humans than _Yusuke?_ Preposterous!). As they laid their trap, the Detective stepped in to intervene, wresting the chain of a chandelier away from the woman with the red hair.

"Hey, give that back!" she said. "We said we could handle this!"

As Yusuke snapped a comeback at her, Hiei darkly muttered, "Yes, Detective. That _gaijin_ is right. There's no need for you to intervene." He crossed his arms and shot a scowl at the absent Yusuke. "And not just because I wish to see a chandelier fall on that demon's head, either."

As the _gaijin_ and the Detective began to quarrel far off in the depths of Onigumo Manor, Hiei's lips curled into a cruel smile.

"No," he said to himself. "There is another, more important reason you needn't worry—but far be it from me to do the detective work for you."

Off in his tree, Hiei shut two of his three eyes.

In the darkness, he watched.

In silence, he waited—both for the demon to break free of Scooby's prison, and to see if Yusuke and his friends would ever realize what it was, exactly, they thought they were protecting the _gaijin_ from.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Needlessly complicated Rube Goldberg Machine to trap a ghost/monster/demon/man in a mask? Check! OF COURSE WE FUCKING HAD TO HAVE ONE OF THOSE. And what is it Hiei has observed that Yusuke seems to have missed? Find out next time!


	20. Mine Your Own Business

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the YYH gang catches on and the Scooby Gang lays traps. Not necessarily in that order. It's more like a sandwich of concepts, really. Something something something summary.

Daphne's grip wasn't strong enough to stand up to Yusuke's, but she sure did _try_ to hang onto the chain connected to the chandelier suspended above their heads, which was something. Yusuke rather admired her gumption in that respect. She was as much of a spitfire as her red hair suggested, which was cool and all, but he didn't want to see her head get smashed in when this… when this weird machine- _thing_ the _gaijin_ were building inevitably malfunctioned. For Pete's sake, they'd made it out of rope and rotten floorboards and the goddamn wire from Velma's bra; no way was this thing safe, Daphne's minefield temper and defense of it notwithstanding.

Which is why it surprised Yusuke as much as it did when Kurama stepped forward and put his hand on his arm. "Yusuke," he said, voice low but full of warning. "Let them work."

"Say _what?_ " Yusuke stared at the fox in utter disbelief. "Are you serious right now?"

"Very serious." Kurama took the chandelier chain from him and passed it back to Daphne, who was looking at Kurama with outright suspicion and open hostility (probably because as far as pretty redheads went, Kurama was giving her stiff competition). Kurama's polite smile didn't falter, though, as he drew Yusuke aside and away from Daphne. In Yusuke's ear he muttered, "After all, Yusuke—we agreed to let Mystery Inc. work their magic, did we not?"

Daphne apparently had very good hearing because her eyes flashed with satisfaction. "That's right!" she said, glaring after them. "So mind your own business, mister!"

Kurama smiled at her again, but she'd gone back to work with Fred and Velma (who kept one arm over her chest since they'd had to dismantle her goddamn underwear and whatnot) and didn't seem to notice his attempt at civility. Yusuke, meanwhile, glared hard enough to drill holes in Kurama's smug face.

"What gives?" he griped. He pointed over his shoulder with his thumb at the damn _gaijin_. "They're gonna get themselves killed!"

"I'm not so sure," Kurama said.

"But why not?" said Kuwabara, who'd followed them off to the side of the room. They were in the front entryway of Onigumo Manor, a two-story atrium with broken windows and a grand staircase set toward the back. Kuwabara wrung his hands together and danced nervously from foot to foot, rotten floorboards creaking under his weight. "That demon is huge, and these _gaijin_ are, well, _not?_ "

Kurama's brow furrowed. "So you haven't noticed."

Yusuke threw up his hands. "Noticed _what?_ "

"Yeah, Kurama," Kuwabara said. "Quit being vague and just spit it out already!"

"Very well." Kurama angled his feet toward the center of the house, from whence Scooby's yowls and the demon's bellows echoed. "Observe the demon's energy very closely, and I believe you'll see what I'm getting at."

Kuwabara (knowing Kurama was worth listening to) shut his eyes at once. A bright wash of his energy passed over Yusuke as Kuwabara extended his awareness into the depths of the house, and soon after Yusuke shut his eyes, too, and allowed his energy to follow Kuwabara's down the hall. The rush of power swept over cracked floorboards and walls riddled with rot, pinging against the dim energy signatures of the unpowered _gaijin_ as it passed over them, and then it continued onward, aiming for the roars of the distant demon. Soon Yusuke's power passed over Shaggy, human and pulsating (it was also the color of fresh pot leaves, Yusuke noticed with a chuckle), and then it encountered the electric zinging zip of Scooby's demonic energy, and then it suffused the room where Scooby currently kept the demon trapped—

Yusuke's eyes snapped open.

Kuwabara's followed suit.

Yusuke and Kurama and Kuwabara exchanged a Look.

"Oh," Yusuke said. " _Oh_. I get it."

"Huh." Kuwabara frowned in the direction of the unseen demon, Shaggy, and Scooby. He knotted his fingers behind his neck as his frown deepened. "Wasn't expecting _that_."

"Neither was I," said Kurama, and his luminous eyes began to twinkle. "But I think you'll agree that the _gaijin_ should be able to handle this themselves, yes?"

As one, Yusuke and Kuwabara nodded, and then the three of them stepped aside to let Mystery Inc. do what it did best—namely catching the shit out of monsters, and look groovy doing it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The YYH crew is catching on… secrets will be revealed soon enough.
> 
> Also, unless I split one particular chapter in half, this fic will likely be a total of 23 chapters PLUS two epilogue chapters. At most it'll be 24 chapters and two epilogues. WE'RE ALMOST DONE WITH THIS GARBAGE, OMG.
> 
> Also-also this chapter title isn't a typo; it's the name of an OG Scooby Doo episode.
> 
> THANK YOU FOR READING MY GARBAGE. YOU DA BEST.


	21. Decoy for a Dog-Demonnapper

In the distant innards of the house, something went  _boom_.

And not a moment too soon, because the  _gaijin_  had only just put the finishing touches on their weird booby trap in the foyer when the demon broke free of the room where Scooby and Shaggy had corralled it. The  _gaijin_  sprinted up the stairs and stood over the archway that lead into the depths of Onigumo Manor, and down the hall Yusuke heard a cacophony of footfalls. Some were booming, the steps of a large creature, while the others were fast and quick and comparatively lighter—human soles clad in leather shoes and the patter of paws, if he had to guess.

And a minute later, he got his confirmation. "Like, zoinks!" said Shaggy, voice echoing down the many labyrinthine corridors of the Manor. "He's gaining on us, Scoob!"

"Run raster, Raggy!" Scoob replied. "Run raster!"

The footfalls pounded harder, tempo increasing as their owners put on a burst of speed. Kurama grabbed Yusuke's elbow and tugged him to the side of the foyer; he grabbed Kuwabara, too, steering them halfway up the grand staircase so they could watch both the floor below and the  _gaijin_  on the landing above. The  _gaijin_  had crowded close to the edge of the rickety railing; they were holding something between them, but from Yusuke's angle he couldn't see anything (and the fact that Fred's broad shoulders were blocking whatever it was they were holding didn't help matters).

And speaking of Fred: He watched the floor below the landing intently, and as the footsteps thundering down the hall grew nearer, he said, "On the count of three, gang! One… two…"

Below him, Shaggy ran out of the hall, through the archway, and into the foyer.

"Three!" said Fred, and the  _gaijin_  heaved whatever they were holding over the bannister.

'Whatever they were holding' turned out to be a bowling ball.

They dropped said bowling ball— _where the fuck did they get a goddamn bowling ball?_ —a beat or two after Shaggy passed below them… and right  _before_  Scooby ran through the arch after him, which seemed like a stupid fucking thing to do to Yusuke, given that the ball now hurtled through the air and straight toward Scooby's head.

… and judging by the way Velma winced and looked horrifically guilty as soon as she let go of the ball, this had been an accident—or, as Yusuke would put it,  _a total and complete fuck-up of the highest goddamn order._

Luckily Scooby-Doo knew how to roll with punches (or bowling ball drops, in this case). Somehow he managed to look up and see the ball coming, and with a yelp he started to backpedal, skidding to a halt on the rotting floor just as the ball struck the boards ahead of him—and apparently the construction in this place was just as fucked up as the timing of the Scooby gang, because when the ball hit a floorboard, it turned the board into a goddamn seesaw. The ball-struck end of the board went down, and the bit of board beneath Scooby popped up into the air—and somehow, against all conceivable odds and in flagrant defiance of gravity, Scooby soared straight up into the air like he'd been shot out of a fuckin' cannon. It was full-on cartoon physics, and Yusuke's eyes damn near felt like they were about to pop out of his head at the sight of Scooby flying up to the chandelier suspended twenty feet above the foyer and glomming onto it like a spider monkey.

All Yusuke could do was hope that this was more of Scooby's brainwashing, because this defied all logic. And he was pretty sure Kurama felt the same way, because beside him, Kurama looked like he was having a stroke.

Scooby's friends, though? They didn't look at all perturbed. In fact, as they stared at Scooby in his spot on the chandelier, all Fred said was an embarrassed: "Oh no! We really dropped the ball, gang!"

"We dropped the ball  _too soon,_  you mean!" Velma added.

"Like, I'll say!" said Shaggy, who was standing in the middle of the foyer and staring up at Scooby with his mouth open. "Way, way too soon!"

Scooby nodded so hard it was a wonder his head didn't fall off. "Roo roon! Roo roon!"

Somewhere in the distance, Yusuke swore he heard canned laughter—the kind of laughter from an old sitcom's studio audience or something equally impossible, laughing at the  _gaijins'_  bad jokes—but he didn't have time to think about that for long, because soon the demon thundered in the foyer and loosed a mighty roar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK so this fic might be one or two chapters longer than predicted because I suck and also am bad at gauging chapter lengths, but that just means more garbage for all of you so THERE.


	22. "A Gaggle of Giggling Gaijin"

The demon thundered into the foyer and loosed a mighty roar—because it promptly tripped over the see-saw floorboard, that is, and started hopping around in place clutching its taloned foot. It was spectacularly funny and now the canned laughter in the distance sounded super close, although Yusuke did have trouble hearing it over the sound of his (and Kuwabara's) guffaws. Even Kurama laughed behind a hand, eyes screwed up as they watched the demon jump around like a sentient pogo stick.

The  _gaijin_ also giggled, but they got over it pretty fast. Soon Daphne was leaning over the railing and shouting at the creature, "To the left, to the left!"

"Forward, forward!" Fred chimed in.

"At this rate, he's never gonna fall into the rest of the trap!" Velma sadly intoned as she shot a disappointed look at their contraption on the other side of the foyer (one that had incorporated a carburetor, an old washtub and a trio of garden flamingos Yusuke had no idea how they'd managed to get, among many other equally random things)—but then there came a horrific creak from overhead.

Yusuke looked up. So did his friends and the Scooby gang, who all gave a horrified gasp as the chain supporting the chandelier (a big round hoop of blackened metal with candle sconces around its rim) rattled and gave way a bit, sending it plummeting three feet downward.

Scooby, who was clinging to this chandelier, gave a mighty yelp and clung to it all the harder. "Rut roh!" he said, voice high and grating. He yelped again when the chandelier dropped a few inches further with another jolt. " _Rikes!_ "

And then the chandelier fell completely, chain hissing through its mooring with the sound of angry snakes. Yusuke let out a bellow of shock and started to dash forward, try and help the deformed dog demon out and break his fall or something—but he stopped cold when he saw the big red  _oni_  stumble into the chandelier's path. The timing was almost too perfect (suspiciously perfect, in fact), and Yusuke watched with his mouth open as the chandelier conked the demon in the middle of its big dumb head. The demon froze with a bellow of pain, reaching for the giant metal hoop balanced precariously between its horns, but Scooby (still clinging to the light fixture like a goddamn spider monkey) did an impressively acrobatic kick-flip-twist that sent Scooby flying, the ring of metal falling neatly around the demon's shoulders, and the demon stumbling to the ground. As the demon lay in a heap on the floor, dazed, Scooby completed his absolutely insane stunt by landing safely in Shaggy's waiting arms, clinging with trembling limbs to the  _gaijin's_  thin neck.

And the rest of the  _gaijin_  didn't miss a fucking beat. They sprinted down the stairs and surrounded the demon, using the chandelier's trailing chain to further tie up its hands and ankles. Yusuke and company watched this go down in stunned silence, being far less accustomed to Scooby's antics than the gaijin who had so neatly captured a vicious demon.

"We did it, gang!" Fred declared when the demon had been trussed up like a BBQ ham. "We caught the demon of Onigumo Manor!"

"Like, you mean  _Scooby_  caught the demon of Onigumo Manor!" Shaggy called.

"You're right!" said Daphne.

"Good job, Scoob!" said Velma.

Scooby didn't move right away. But then, slowly, he lifted his head from Shaggy's neck and fluttered his eyelashes at his friends, enormously cheesy grin plastered across his bulbous face.

"Rhee-hee-hee." Scooby put a paw to his mouth, covering up his tombstone teeth. "Rhank rou!"

And the  _gaijin_  laughed like it was the funniest joke in the world while Scooby blushed. Blushed.  _The dog blushed_. Yusuke was so fucking done with this place.

As was Kuwabara, apparently. "Why didn't they just drop the chandelier on the demon to begin with?" he said, looking peeved.

"I haven't the faintest idea," Kurama said, voice hollow.

"It all seems really—what's the word?" Kuwabara muttered. "Uh… oh yeah, unnecessary?"

"Rube Goldberg Machines almost always are, even when they do work. But we'll discuss that later." Kurama's eyes fixed steadily upon the  _gaijin_ and the demon they had crowded around. "Something tells me we'll want to pay attention to this."

The members of Mystery Inc. looked determined as they came within arm's reach of the massive demon. Fred approached the demon from behind, jaw firmly set as he grasped its enormous black horns and dug in his feet, arms tensing beneath the fabric of his letterman jacket. He yanked the demon's head upward with a grunt—and then there came a tearing noise, like seams ripping, and the demon's head separated from its beefy neck.

Because it  _was_ held on with seams.

Literal, actual seams—because the demon's head and neck were part of a very elaborate costume that actually looked super fake and stuff up close. Obvious rubber scales, big plastic talons, musculature not anatomically sound (though of Yusuke's party, only Kurama noticed that detail), it was a wonder Yusuke had ever mistaken this thing for a legit demon at all. The rush of the encounter had gotten the better of him, was his excuse. He'd been too distracted by Scooby to look closely enough to spot a fake.

Mystery Inc., however, had not been put off their game quite as much. The person beneath the elaborate mask bore the face of a stranger to Yusuke, but when their dazed features were revealed, Mystery Inc. let out a collective gasp… of recognition.

"Like, zoinks!" said Shaggy. "I know that guy!"

"Just like we thought!" declared Fred. "It's Old Man Jii-chan!"

"… fucking WHO?" Yusuke and Kuwabara said in unison, and beside them, Kurama let out a weary sigh.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inevitably Scooby episodes end with them building an elaborate trap to catch the perpetrator, but the trap either fails and yet Scooby saves the day anyway, or the trap simply works.
> 
> Also, Old Man Jii-chan. Old Man Jenkins? Ehh? Ehhhhhhh? (*gets shot for bad puns) Anyway, "jii-chan" means "grandpa" so it's also a Japanese pun as well as an oblique Scooby Doo reference.


	23. Foul Play in Funland

Kurama, ever the coolheaded demon, was the first to ask a useful question. "I take it you all know this man?" he said with a nod to the person in the demon costume.

The  _gaijin_ nodded. The aforementioned old man also nodded, but probably because he had a concussion. Soon he shook his head, though, rheumy eyes focusing as he looked around the foyer. He had a low ponytail of grey hair and piercing black eyes set in a wizened face, but his neck was thick with muscle despite the wrinkles set deeply around his thin mouth. Old dude, sure, but still spry enough to cart around a heavy costumes. Yusuke knew better than to underestimate the elderly and had more than a few scars to show exactly how he'd learned that lesson.

"Yes, we know him," Fred said. "He's Jii-chan, the caretaker of this estate."

Velma said, "We first suspected him when investigating the background of Onigumo Manor."

"He was one of the only people interested in the Manor at all, which made it pretty easy to narrow down our list of suspects," Daphne said.

"That's right," Velma said with a resolute nod. "It was between him, the heiress of the estate, or the CEO of a corporation who wanted to turn this land into a shopping mall."

"Like, Jii-chan's taken care of this place for so long, it's no wonder he wanted it all to himself," Shaggy said, voice muffled since Scooby was still sitting in his arms and blocking, like, half of his face.

Fred nodded in confirmation. "We met the heiress of this estate in town while researching who owned the property, before she went missing. Turns out Sakura-chan wants to bulldoze this old house, turn the place into a nature sanctuary, and donate it to the public."

"But before she could hand over the property to the government, the deed went missing," Daphne said. "And then she went missing, too!"

"Her diary said she was going to come to the Manor and inspect the property, so we followed that clue here," Velma said. "Clues in the house then gave us the evidence we needed to solve the mystery."

"And during their hunt for clues, they found  _me._ "

A smooth voice, feminine and airy and thoroughly unfamiliar, uttered that final statement. Yusuke turned at once toward the top of the stairs, where a young woman in a deep purple kimono had materialized like a ghost. She wore her hair in a sleek bun, beautiful face imperious as she gripped the upper banister and stared into the foyer below.

Jii-chan's head jerked over his shoulder when she spoke—but as soon as his gaze met hers, he tore his eyes away and stared at the floor, pulse beating in his clenched jaw.

"Sakura-chan!" Fred said

"Like, zoinks!" Shaggy stared at her with his mouth open. "You found her?!"

"We did!" said Daphne.

"She was in a basement not marked on the house's blueprints," Velma said, "but we were able to find the entrance through some good old detective work."

Sakura nodded, descending the stairs with delicate precision, fingers skimming the railing with every step. "I waited upstairs just as you told me to, but I am sorry, for I could wait no longer. I needed to see this with my own eyes." Said eyes looked as hard as obsidian as she came to stand before the man in the monster costume. He refused to look at her even when she said in a low, urgent voice, "Jii-chan. You were like a father to me, and yet you took me hostage and tried to force me to sign over  _this_ —the deed to Onigumo Manor."

Her hand disappeared into her sleeve and pulled forth a scroll of paper. Jii-chan's eyes flashed as he looked up, but he didn't look at Sakura. No—he simply regarded the scroll she proffered with hunger in his eyes, like someone had offered a greedy dog a scrap of meat.

Jii-chan hadn't said a word, but Yusuke had already pegged him as a slimeball.

And what Velma said next only confirmed his opinion. "Jii-chan was the one making people go missing lately," she said. "And by 'go missing', I mean he scared them off with his costume. They left town without checking out of their hotel, which is why people thought they were missing."

"Or, like, eaten by a hungry demon," said Shaggy.

"Reah! Rah remon!" Scooby concurred with a heavy nod.

"We tracked them down and got their eye-witness accounts." Fred crossed his arms and glared at the old man. "They're all at home and safe, if not a little spooked."

"I'm guessing Jii-chan figured that if he could give this place a haunted reputation, he could buy it from Sakura-chan, or and scare off both Sakura-chan and the CEO of that development company," said Daphne.

Velma nodded. "He wanted this place all to himself!"

Jii-chan flinched, teeth gritting as he aimed a red-hot glare at the room at large. "You fools!" he spat in a voice like a sentient boulder. "I didn't want  _it_! I wanted to  _sell_  it to that city slicker CEO and become a millionaire!"

Sakura-chan gasped. "Jii-chan! How could you?"

"Bah! How could I not?" He aimed his glare at her with particular venom, like he was trying to melt her into goo with his eyes alone. Hate filled them up like fire, burning and hot. With more of that acid Jii-chan spat, "You're a stupid, spoiled girl who didn't recognize the value of what she'd inherited.  _I_  deserved this land, not  _you!"_ He turned his sneer toward everyone else. "But I suppose none of that matters now. You  _gaijin_  beat me at my own game." Yellowed eyes traveled from one gaijin to the next, spearing each with a burst of contempt. "And I would've gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for you meddling kids, not to mention your stupid d—"

His eyes fixed on Scooby.

He stopped talking mid-word.

For a second, he didn't move.

Then his eyes bugged out of his skull, and he slumped into a dead faint.

Mystery Inc. all gasped, of course, crowding in close to inspect his head and see if the falling chandelier had given him a real concussion (which is should have, to be fair). Their sharp eyes saw a lot of things, Yusuke mused to himself. They'd seen through Jii-chan's disguise. They'd found Sakura in a hidden room. They'd seen through the man's whole scheme as if it were transparent.

But even their sharp eyes couldn't see the imp demon that came crawling out of Jii-chan's slack and unconscious mouth. No, that was only visible to Yusuke and his friends, and as the imp tried to fly off into the night, Yusuke snatched it out of the air and stuffed the wriggling apparition into his pocket.

"—that dog! That dog's not a dog at all!" the imp was screeching. "It's a demon, like me!"

Scooby, still in Shaggy's arms, craned his head over Shaggy's shoulder to look at Yusuke. "Rut ras rhat?" he asked with a curious tilt of his head.

Yusuke shrugged. "Oh. You know." He took the imp out briefly, waiting for Scooby's eyes to widen before he shoved the creature once more from sight. "Just a mosquito, is all."

Scooby covered his mouth with a paw and giggled.

Somewhere in the distance, a laugh-track played—and this time, Yusuke laughed along with it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This just wouldn't be a Scooby episode (er, story) without a chapter where they explain how they solved the mystery, not to mention a kidnapped bystander and the "meddling kids" line… and yes, the culprit was a human in a suit, but Koenma's intel wasn't totally wrong. It was just an imp demon, not an oni!


	24. What a Night for a Fright

Red and blue lights flashed over the face of Onigumo Manor, turning the broken windows on its face into pits like the eyes of a corpse—which basically meant it looked just as dark and haunted as fuck as it had when Yusuke and his friends first rolled up on its dilapidated presence.

Jii-chan (whose malice toward Sakura hadn't been entirely brought on by the imp demon, it seemed) sat in the back of a police cruiser, leering out the window at Sakura-chan where she stood speaking to a small squadron of uniformed officers. Fred, Daphne and Velma stood at her side to also speak with the officers, who looked absolutely flummoxed that the gaijin were there, much less that they solved the case in the first place. Said officers had talked to Yusuke and company first before quickly realizing that Fred was the one in charge and that Velma had the most thorough knowledge of the day's events, and thus they mostly wanted to talk to Fred and company. But that was OK by Yusuke. He'd never had much trust in cops, and he was more than a little eager to hang back and not get involved any more than was necessary.

Yusuke stood with Kuwabara and Kurama a good ways away from the front of the house, near the place where the path to Onigumo Manor trailed away into the woods on its way to the main road. They didn't speak, and the demon in Yusuke's pocket had long since quieted, having succumbed to its fate of imprisonment at last (or maybe it had suffocated; hell if Yusuke gave a shit). When the sound of tires crunching over gravel and the rumble of an engine cut the night's quiet air, Yusuke turned to see a van bumping down the thin dirt road. A magnetic decal on the van's side read "MSYTERY INC." in psychedelic letters, ones that seemed to almost pulse as the lights from the cops' cruisers played over their bright orange contours.

It was no surprise to see Shaggy get out of the van once it rolled to a stop and the engine cut off. "Like, it's not our usual ride," the gaijin said as he gave the van's body a pat, "but it gets the job done."

"Custom decals." Yusuke slapped the side of the van, too, in appreciation. "Nice."

"We don't travel abroad without 'em!" Shaggy's face turned uncharacteristically grave. "Thanks for your help in there, guys. Like, still dunno what you were doing out here, but Scoob's a good judge of character. He says you were trying to help, and I believe 'im." And then he was grinning again, which suited him much better, and he held out a hand. "Put 'er there."

Yusuke shook it without hesitation. "Speaking of Scoob," he said. "Where'd that mutt get off to, anyway?"

Shaggy's brow furrowed. "Like. Now that you mention it, I dunno." He cupped his hands around his mouth, looking around for his four-legged friend as he called, "Scoob? Scooby? Scooby-Doo, where are y—?"

A shadow moved beyond the van's many panes of glass. Shaggy turned just as a face appeared in the driver's side window—and this face was red, with burning yellow eyes and enormous curving teeth, black horns jutting from its severe slope of a brow. At once Shaggy gave a frightened yelp, falling flat on his backside as he scrambled away… but then one brown paw came up and ripped the demon mask off of Scooby's grinning face. Yusuke guffawed, slapping his knee as Shaggy sheepishly scrambled up and wrenched the van door open. Scooby hopped out and held up the mask, grinning ear to ear as his tail whipped the air behind him. Shaggy just put his hands on his hips, though, one foot tapping ominously against the gravel road.

"Say," Kuwabara said as he pointed at the monster mask. "Think I could take that home as a souvenir or somethin'? It's really well made n' stuff."

"Like, be my guest!" Shaggy grabbed the mask and looked at it with a shudder. "That thing is way too creepy for me!"

As Kuwabara took possession of the mask, Yusuke wondered if Kuwabara would let him borrow it—because off the top of his head, he could think of at least 19 different ways he could use it to scare Keiko spitless, and Yusuke wasn't the type to let such a golden (or demonic, rather) opportunity pass him by.

Before he could ask Kuwabara about his lending policies, a car door shut with a hollow thump. One of the officers had placed Sakura-san in the front seat of a cruiser; the other cops were bundling themselves into their own cars to cart away Jii-chan and report their findings to their station, or whatever; it wasn't like Yusuke knew what cops got up to in their spare time. Fred and the rest of the gaijin were ambling over wearing big grins on their faces, and somehow Daphne had no trouble walking over the rough terrain in her high heels. Woman had a list of skills as long as her legs, apparently. Yusuke could appreciate that. Mostly the legs, though.

"Well, gang," Fred said when they came to a stop beside the van. "Looks like we solved another mystery."

Daphne grinned; one hip popped out, her hand alighting upon it as she tossed her hair. "And it seems we made some new friends in the bargain."

"Friends, huh?" Yusuke teased. "And to think I thought you didn't like me very much."

"Well." She shrugged, but a smile tugged at her glossed lips. "You're not the worst thing ever."

"Think we could look you up if we visit Japan again?" Fred asked.

"Definitely," said Yusuke. "I run a ramen stand out of Sarayashiki. Food's on me."

Shaggy's metaphorical ears perked up. "Like, ramen?" he said, practically drooling. "Real Japanese ramen?"

Scooby's literal ears perked up. "Rike, ramen?" he echoed, actually drooling. "Real Rapanese ramen?"

"Oh, you better not say that—these two'll eat you out of house and home!" Velma said, and everyone (including the invisible studio audience Yusuke was pretty sure Scooby had projected straight into his head) laughed along with her.

It was oddly bittersweet, watching the gaijin load up into the car. Yusuke hadn't known them for more than a few hours, but they were an oddly charming bunch. Not that he wanted to go on another wild goose-chase in a dilapidated and supposedly haunted mansion in the woods again, but this whole misadventure had actually been pretty fun. He waved at each member of Mystery Inc. as they climbed one by one into the van, leaving the trunk open for Scooby. But as all of the doors other than the trunk's shut and as Scooby headed toward the back of the van to jump inside, Yusuke stepped forward.

Scooby paused, regarding Yusuke over one rounded shoulder. Fred, behind the wheel, engaged the engine, filling the air with the quiet vibration of pumping pistons and rotating belts. The dog-demon's eyes, large and liquid and intense, held apprehension in their depths—but when Yusuke smiled, Scooby gave him a tentative smile in return.

"Scooby," Yusuke said, jerking his head toward the van. "Take care of them, yeah?"

"We won't tell anybody about you. But you gotta promise you'll behave," Kuwabara added.

"Their trust is a gift," said Kurama. "Take care to respect what they've given you."

Scooby's enormous head dipped into a nod. "Rye rill," he said, nodding twice, and then a third time. "Rye romise."

Kuwabara's brow knit, expression sympathetic. "Think you'll ever tell them what you really are?" he said.

"Rye… rye runno." Scooby shot a look at the van, where Velma, Daphne, Fred and Shaggy all sat waiting for him to climb in the back. They waved when they saw him looking, faces open and bright and full of affection for their friend. Scooby's face all but melted when he saw them, light brightening his dark eyes to the color of warm amber.

"Well. Think it over," Yusuke said, trying to keep an annoyingly sappy smile off his face (and for the record, he blamed the damn dog's mind control for the mushy feeling in his chest). "And if you ever need a place to crash, just give us a call."

Kuwabara grinned. "You've got friends in Japan now, Scooby."

"Ones you'll never have to use your psychic powers to convince to trust you." Kurama's smile, though stern, somehow managed to look comforting. "Our trust is a gift given freely, after all."

Scooby's head sank low to the ground. "Rhank rou," he said, the whites showing all the way around his suddenly watering eyes. "Rhank rou rery ruch."

Yusuke blanched, a bit afraid the dog would start wallowing and weeping given the way the mutt's lower lip had begun to wobble like jello in an earthquake. Even though Yusuke had ended up kind of enjoying Scooby's ridiculousness, he was not down for playing therapist or whatever—but luckily Shaggy rolled down one of the van's windows and stuck his goatee-bearing head out.

"C'mon, Scooby!" Shjggy said. "Like, daylight's wasting!"

"Rut-roh! Re right rhere!" Scooby said, and he bolted for the back of the van. "Rye, ruys!" he tossed over his shoulder at Yusuke and his friends. "Rill re reet ragain!"

"Bye, Scoob!" said Kuwabara as Scooby disappeared into the van.

"Farewell, Scooby-Doo," said Kurama as the door shut in Scooby's wake.

"Sayonara, ya mangy mutt," Yusuke said as Fred put the van into drive.

In silence they watched Mystery Inc. drive slowly away from Onigumo Manor, which watched with its eye-hollow windows as the van trundled down the gravel road. Kuwabara gave a low chuckle as the van rolled farther and farther away, holding up the demon mask so he could admire its lurid features.

"It's hilarious, what regular old humans think demons look like," Yusuke said, nudging Kuwabara in the ribs. "Can't believe a rubber mask fooled ya, man!"

Kuwabara's brow shot up. "You thought the demon was real at first, too, y'know."

"Urk!"

"It doesn't matter." Kurama stared off after the van, but his eyes seemed to look even further into the distance. "They proved themselves capable sleuths, in the end. They realized who the villain was possessing, even if they didn't realize he was being manipulated by a parasitic demon. They parsed motive and saved a hostage all on their own."

"What do you think that imp wanted with the manor, really?" Kuwabara said, looking at the van's retreating bumper as well. "Base of operations in Human World?"

"Maybe he just wanted the money, like he said," said Yusuke.

"Demon road trip?" Kuwabara suggested. "Buy a yacht and see the world?"

"That imp's a real jet-setter, I can tell."

Yusuke and Kuwabara laughed. Kurama's eyes closed. His head dipped, chin lowering nearly to his chest.

"Perhaps he merely desired a place to belong," Kurama murmured.

There came a long moment of silence, then. Yusuke tried his best not to put the imp, Scooby and even Kurama into the same box inside his head—but it was hard, and he was more than a little glad when Kuwabara broke the silence.

"Well. No point in wondering, since Koenma'll get the truth out of 'im, anyway," he said. "But whatever the imp wanted, it was a good thing we were here to stop him." And he grinned, his big, blocky face like a light in the dark forest that surrounded Onigumo Manor. "It's a good thing we were here to stop him… with the help of Mystery Inc."

In a silence more contented than the one that had come before, the trio turned to watch the van as it neared a distant bend in the road. Scooby's head popped up in the back window, teeth showing in an enormous, cheerful grin that he paired with a wave of his paw.

Yusuke lifted his hand and returned the gesture.

He got the sense he should be polite, because more importantly, he got the sense he'd meet that pup named Scooby-Doo again someday—and in spite of all they'd been through in the depths of Onigumo Manor, Yusuke was looking forward to it.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let it be known that as soon as the van gets out of sight, Hiei drops out of his tree and scares the pants off Kuwabara and Yusuke. Kurama greets him politely while Yusuke snarls, "And just where the fuck have you been all night?" To which Hiei responds by saying something snarky as hell before calling them idiots for not realizing that the demon was an imp-possessed human sooner, and then a brawl breaks out while Koenma phones them over the Communication Mirror, screaming that he's solved the whole case and they don't need to worry about the demon because it's just an imp. Kurama pickpockets the mirror from Yusuke and breaks the news that Koenma didn't solve shit because they've already solved the case with the help of Mystery Inc., and Koenma pouts for the next 1,000 years about it.
> 
> THE END.
> 
> Naw but seriously, that's the end of the main storyline so I'm marking this as "complete". You're going to get two short epilogue chapters, though. The first will be about Hiei, and it will be needlessly full of FEELS. The second will be a bonus chapter for anyone who follows my YYH SI story "Lucky Child." It won't make sense to anyone but LC readers, so feel free to ignore it if you don't already read "LC." It will also be pointlessly silly. Don't get too excited.
> 
> And with that… we're done. Thanks for reading this garbage that I'm honestly really in love with. It was a blast and I'm so glad I got to go on this gloriously garbage journey with you.


End file.
